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MISSIONARY    ANNALS. 

Price  per  vol.,  cloth  30c.,  paper  18c. 


I. 
MEMOIR  OF  ROBERT  MOFFAT 

BY  MRS.  M.  L.  WILDER. 


II. 

LIFE    OF    ADONIRAM    JUDSON 

BY  MISS  JVL1A  H.  JOHNSTON. 


III. 

WOMAN    AND    THE    GOSPEL    IN    PERSIA 

BY  REV.  THOMAS  LAURIE,  D.  D. 


IV. 

LIFE    OF    REV.    JUSTIN    PERKINS,    D.  D. 

BY  REV.  HENRY  MARTYN  PERKINS. 


V. 

LIFE    OF   DAVID    LIVINGSTONE 

BY  MRS.  J.  H.  WORCESTER,  Jit. 


OTHERS  IN  PREPARATION,          SENT  POSTPAID  ON  RECEIPT  OF  PRICE. 


CHICAGO: 

WOMAN'S  PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OK  MISSIONS  OK  THK  NOKTHWKST. 
Koom  48,  McCormick  Block. 


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MISSIONARY   ANNALS. 


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LIFE  OF 

HENEY  MAETYN, 

MISSIONARY  TO  INDIA  AND  PERSIA, 


1781  to  1812 


ABRIDGED  FROM  THE    MEMOIR. 


MRS.  SARAH  J.  RHEA. 


CHICAGO: 

WOMAN'S  PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OF  FOREIGN  MISSIONS  OP  THE  NORTHWEST, 
Boom  48  McCormick  Block, 


COPYRIGHT,  1888, 

BY 

WOMAN'S  PRESBYTERIAN  BOAKD  OF  MISSIONS 
OF  THK  NORTHWEST. 


PAGE. 

EDUCATION  AND  PREPARATION,  5 

LIFE  IN  INDIA,  .  .  .  13 

LIFE  IN  PERSIA,  AND  DEATH,  29 


550584 


I  hold  in  my  hand  an  album  adorned  with  pictures  of  missionaries,  my 
brethren  and  sisters,  the  ambassadors  of  the  King.  On  one  of  the  first 
pages  is  "  the  tomb  of  Henry  Martyn,"  given  me  by  Dr.  Van  Lennep,  who 
had  just  visited  the  sacred  spot  and  described  it  vividly.  When  I  turn  the 
pages  of  my  album  and  come  to  this,  I  pause  with  reverence  and  the  over- 
flowings of  deep  and  tender  emotion,  and  my  mind  adds  other  pictures, 
both  terrestrial  and  celestial,  to  the  one  upon  the  page.  My  own  missionary 
life  as  the  companion  of  him  whom  Dr.  Perkins  called  "  the  later  Henry 
Martyn,"  was  spent  in  Henry  Martyn's  Persia.  They  were  alike  I  think  in 
many  things,  these  two  Persian  evangelists,  and  also  in  their  deaths. 
When  they  passed  out  of  the  Tabriz  gate,  journeying  homeward  after  a 
course  of  illness  in  the  fated  city,  for  each  it  was  a  quick  ascent,  a  painful 
translation,  to  the  heavenly  city  with  abundant  entrance  and  the  Master's 
"  well  done  "-"-in  heaven;  and  on  earth,  a  foreign  grave  taking  possession 
for  Christ,  as  the  Nestorians  reverently  say,  with  "  white  stones  still  speak- 
ing out."  S.  J.  R. 


I. 

THE  PERCEPTION  OF  THE  INFINITE. 

THE  PEOBLEM   OF   THE   ORIGIN   OF  RELIGION. 

How  is  it  that  we  have  a  religion?  This  is  a 
question  which  has  not  been  asked  for  the  first  time 
in  these  latter  days,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  a  question 
which  sounds  startling  even  to  ears  that  have  been 
hardened  by  the  din  of  many  battles,  fought  for  the 
conquest  of  truth.  How  it  is  that  we  exist,  how  it  is 
that  we  perceive,  how  it  is  that  we  form  concepts, 
how  it  is  that  we  compare  precepts  and  concepts, 
add  and  subtract,  multiply  and  divide  them  —  all 
these  are  problems  with  which  everybody  is  more  or 
less  familiar,  from  the  days  in  which  he  first  opened 
the  pages  of  Plato  or  Aristotle,  of  Hume  or  Kant. 
Sensation,  perception,  imagination,  reasoning,  every- 
thing in  fact  which  exists  in  our  own  consciousness, 
has  had  to  defend  the  right  and  reason  of  its  exist- 
ence ;  but  the  question,  Why  we  believe,  why  we 
are,  or  imagine  we  are  conscious  of  things  which  we 
can  neither  perceive  with  our  senses,  nor  conceive 
with  our  reason  —  a  question,  it  would  seem  more 
natural  to  ask  than  any  other  —  has  but  seldom  re- 
ceived, even  from  the  greatest  philosophers,  that  at- 
tention which  it  seems  so  fully  to  deserve. 
1 


2  THE  PEKCEl'TION   OF   THE  INFINITE. 

STRAUSS  :    HAVE   WE   STILL  ANY  RELIGION  ? 

What  can  be  less  satisfactory  than  the  manner  in 
which  this  problem  has  lately  been  pushed  into  the 
foreground  of  popular  controversy?  Strauss,  in  many 
respects  a  most  acute  reasoner,  puts  before  us  in  his 
last  work,  "  The  Old  and  the  New  Faith,"  the  ques- 
tion, "  Have  we  still  any  religion  ?  "  To  a  challenge 
put  in  this  form,  the  only  answer  that  could  be  given 
would  be  an  appeal  to  statistics ;  and  here  we  should 
soon  be  told  that,  out  of  a  hundred  thousand  people, 
there  is  hardly  one  who  professes  to  be  without  re- 
ligion. If  another  answer  was  wanted,  the  question 
ought  to  have  been  put  in  a  different  form.  Strauss 
ought  before  all  things  to  have  told  us  clearly  what 
lie  himself  understands  by  religion.  He  ought  to 
have  defined  religion  both  in  its  psychological  and 
historical  development.  But  what  does  he  do  in- 
stead ?  He  simply  takes  the  old  definition  which 
Schleiermacher  gave  of  religion,  viz.,  that  it  consists 
in  a  feeling  of  absolute  dependence,  and  he  supple- 
ments it  by  a  definition  of  Feuerbach's,  that  the  es- 
sence of  all  religion  is  covetousness,  which  manifests 
itself  in  prayer,  sacrifice,  and  faith.  He  then  con- 
cludes, because  there  is  less  of  prayer,  crossing,  and 
attending  mass  in  our  days  than  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
that,  therefore,  there  is  little  left  of  real  piety  and  re- 
ligion. I  have  used,  as  much  as  possible,  Strauss's 
own  words. 

But  where  has  Strauss  or  anybody  else  proved  that 
true  religion  manifests  itself  in  prayer,  crossing,  and 
attending  mass  only,  and  that  all  who  do  not  pray, 
who  do  not  cross  themselves,  and  who  do  not  attend 
mass,  have  no  longer  any  religion  at  all,  and  no  belief 


THE   PERCEPTION   OF   THE  INFINITE.  3 

in  God?  If  we  read  on,  we  are  almost  tempted  to 
admit  that  M.  Renan  was  right  in  saying  that  those 
poor  Germans  try  very  hard  to  be  irreligious  and 
atheistical,  but  never  succeed.  Strauss  says :  "  The 
world  is  to  us  the  workshop  of  the  Rational  and  the 
Good.  That  on  which  we  feel  ourselves  absolutely 
dependent  is  by  no  means  a  brute  power,  before 
which  we  must  bow  in  silent  resignation.  It  is  order 
and  law,  reason  and  goodness,  to  which  we  surrender 
ourselves  with  loving  confidence.  In  our  inmost  nat- 
ure we  feel  a  kinship  between  ourselves  and  that  on 
which  we  depend.  In  our  dependence  we  are  free, 
and  pride  and  humility,  joy  and  resignation,  are 
mingled  together  in  our  feeling  for  all  that  exists." 

If  that  is  not  religion,  how  is  it  to  be  called  ?  The 
whole  argument  of  Strauss  amounts,  in  fact,  to  this. 
He  retains  religion  as  the  feeling  of  dependence,  in 
the  full  sense  assigned  to  it  by  Schleiermacher,  but  he 
rejects  the  element  added  by  Feuerbach,  namely,  the 
motive  of  covetousness,  as  both  untrue  and  unworthy 
of  religion.  Strauss  himself  is  so  completely  in  the 
dark  as  to  the  true  essence  of  religion,  that  when,  at 
the  end  of  the  second  chapter  of  his  book,  he  asks 
himself  whether  he  still  has  a  religion,  he  can  only 
answer,  "Yes  or  No,  according  as  you  understand  it." 

Yes,  but  this  is  the  very  point  which  ought  to  have 
been  determined  first,  namely,  what  we  ought  to  un- 
derstand by  religion.  And  here  I  answer  that  in  or- 
der to  understand  what  religion  is,  we  must  first  of  all 
see  what  it  has  been,  and  how  it  has  come  to  be  what 
it  is. 

ANTIQUITY   OF  RELIGION. 

Religion  is  not  a  new  invention.  It  is,  if  not  as 
old  as  the  world,  at  least  as  old  as  the  world  we 


4  THE   PERCEPTION   OF   THE  INFINITE. 

know.  As  soon  almost  as  we  know  anything  of  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  man,  we  find  him  in  posses- 
sion of  religion,  or  rather  possessed  by  religion.  The 
oldest  literary  documents  are  almost  everywhere  relig- 
ious. "  Our  earth,"  as  Herder 1  says,  "  owes  the  seeds 
of  all  higher  culture  to  religious  tradition,  whether 
literary  or  oral."  Even  if  we  go  beyond  the  age  of 
literature,  if  we  explore  the  deepest  levels  of  human 
thought,  we  can  discover,  in  the  crude  ore  which  was 
made  to  supply  the  earliest  coins  or  counters  of  the 
human  mind,  the  presence  of  religious  ingredients. 
Before  the  Aryan  languages  separated  —  and  who  is 
to  tell  how  many  thousand  years  before  the  first 
hymn  of  the  Veda  or  the  first  line  of  Homer  that 
ethnic  schism  may  have  happened?  —  there  existed  in 
them  an  expression  for  light,  and  from  it,  from  the 
root  div,  to  shine,  the  adjective  deva  had  been  formed, 
meaning  originally  "  bright."  Afterwards  this  word 
deva  was  applied,  as  a  comprehensive  designation,  to 
all  the  bright  powers  of  the  morning  and  the  spring, 
as  opposed  to  all  the  dark  powers  of  the  night  and  the 
winter  ;  but  when  we  meet  with  it  for  the  first  time 
in  the  oldest  literary  documents,  it  is  already  so  far 
removed  from  this  its  primitive  etymological  mean- 
ing, that  in  the  Veda  there  are  but  few  passages 
where  we  can  with  certainty  translate  it  still  by 
"bright."  The  bright  dawn  is  addressed  in  the  Veda 
as  devi  ushas,  but  it  must  remain  doubtful  whether 
the  old  poets  still  felt  in  that  address  the  etymolog- 
ical meaning  of  brightness,  or  whether  we  ought  not 
to  translate  deva  in  the  Veda,  as  deus  in  Latin,  by 
God,  however  difficult  we  may  find  it  to  connect  any 
definite  meaning  with  such  a  translation.  Still,  what 

i  Herder,  Ideen  zur  Getchichte  der  Menschheit,  9.  Bucb,  p.  130  (ed. 
Brockhaus). 


THE  PERCEPTION    OF   THE  INFINITE.  5 

we  know  for  certain  is,  that  deva  came  to  mean 
"god,"  because  it  originally  meant  "bright,"  and  we 
cannot  doubt  that  something  beyond  the  meaning  of 
brightness  had  attached  itself  to  the  word  deva  be- 
fore the  ancestors  of  the  Indians  and  Italians  broke 
up  from  their  common  home. 

Thus,  whether  we  descend  to  the  lowest  roots  of 
our  own  intellectual  growth,  or  ascend  to  the  loftiest 
heights  of  modern  speculation,  everywhere  we  find 
religion  as  a  power  that  conquers,  and  conquers  even 
those  who  think  that  they  have  conquered  it. 

SCIENCE  OF  BELIGION. 

Such  a  power  did  not  escape  the  keen-eyed  philos- 
ophers of  ancient  Greece.  They,  to  whom  the  world 
of  thought  seems  to  have  been  as  serene  and  trans- 
parent as  the  air  which  revealed  the  sea,  the  shore, 
and  the  sky  of  Athens,  were  startled  at  a  very  early 
time  by  the  presence  of  religion,  as  by  the  appearance 
of  a  phantom  which  they  could  not  explain.  Here 
was  the  beginning  of  the  science  of  religion,  which  is 
not,  as  has  often  been  said,  a  science  of  to-day  or  of 
yesterday.  The  theory  on  the  origin  of  religion  put 
forward  by  Feuerbach  in  his  work  "  On  the  Essence 
of  Christianity,"  which  sounds  to  us  like  the  last  note 
of  modern  despair,  was  anticipated  more  than  two 
thousand  years  ago  by  the  philosophers  of  Greece. 
With  Feuerbach  religion  is  a  radical  evil,  inherent 
in  mankind  —  the  sick  heart  of  man  is  the  source  of 
all  religion,  and  of  all  misery.  With  Herakleitos,  in 
the  sixth  century  B.  c.,  religion  is  a  disease,  though 
a  sacred  disease.1  Such  a  saying,  whatever  we  may 

1  See  Heracliti  Ephesii  Reliquiae,  ed.  Bywater,  p.  57,  1. 18,  from  Vita 
Heraditi  e  Diogene  Laertio,  ix.  1.    Mr.  Bywater  places  the  saying  nj>> 


6  THE  PERCEPTION   OF   THE  INFINITE. 

think  of  its  truth,  shows,  at  all  events,  that  religion 
and  the  origin  of  religious  ideas  had  formed  the  sub- 
ject of  deep  and  anxious  thought  at  the  very  begin- 
ning of  what  we  call  the  history  of  philosophy. 

I  doubt,  however,  whether  there  was  in  the  sayings 
of  Herakleitos  the  same  hostile  spirit  against  all  re- 
ligion as  that  which  pervades  the  writings  of  Feuer- 
bach.  The  idea  that  to  believe  is  meritorious  was 
not  an  ancient  Greek  idea,  and  therefore  to  doubt 
was  not  yet  regarded  as  a  crime,  except  where  it  in- 
terfered with  public  institutions.  There  was,  no 
doubt,  an  orthodox  party  in  Greece,  but  we  can 
hardly  say  that  it  was  fanatical  ; 1  nay,  it  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  understand  at  what  time  it  ac- 
quired its  power  and  whence  it  took  its  coherence.2 

Herakleitos  certainly  blames  those  who  follow  sing- 
ers (aoiSo/),3  and  whose  teacher  is  the  crowd,  who 
pray  to  idols,  as  if  they  were  to  gossip  with  the  walls 
of  houses,  not  knowing  what  gods  and  heroes  really 
are.  Epikouros  does  the  same.  But,  unlike  Epi- 
kouros,  Herakleitos  nowhere  denies  the  existence  of 
invisible  Gods  or  of  the  One  Divine.  Only  when  he 
saw  people  believing  in  what  the  singers,  such  as 

re  olija-iv  iepav  vovov  «?A«y«,  among  the  Spuria,  p.  51.  It  seems  to  me  to  have 
the  full,  massive,  and  noble  ring  of  Herakleitos.  It  is  true  that  (HTJCTW  means 
rather  opinion  and  prejudice  in  general  than  religious  belief;  but  to  the 
philosophical  mind  of  Herakleitos  the  latter  is  a  subdivision  only  of  the 
former.  Opinion  in  general  might  be  called  a  disease,  but  hardly  a  sacred 
disease,  nor  can  sacred  disease  be  taken  here  either  in  the  sense  of  great 
and  fearful  disease,  or  in  the  technical  sense  of  epilepsy.  If  I  am  wrong, 
I  share  my  error  with  one  of  the  best  Greek  scholars  and  mythologies,  for 
Welcker  takes  the  words  of  Herakleitos  in  the  same  sense  in  which  I  have 
taken  them.  They  are  sometimes  ascribed  to  Epikouros;  anyhow  they  be- 
long to  the  oldest  wisdom  of  Greece. 

1  Lange,  Geschichte  des  Materialismuf,,  i.  4. 

2  See  E.  Curtius,  Uber  die  Bedeutung  von  Delphi  fur  die  Giiechitcht 
Cultur,  Festrede  am  22  Februar,  1878. 

»  Heracliti  Reliquiae,  cxi.,  cxxvi. 


THE  PERCEPTION   OF   THE  INFINITE.  7 

Homer,  and  Hesiod,  told  them  about  Zeus  and  Hera, 
about  Hermes  and  Aphrodite,  he  seems  to  have  mar- 
veled ;  and  the  only  explanation  which  he  could  find 
of  so  strange  a  phenomenon  was,  that  it  arose  from 
an  affection  of  the  mind,  which  the  physician  might 
try  to  heal,  whensoever  it  showed  itself,  but  which 
he  could  never  hope  to  stamp  out  altogether. 

In  a  certain  sense,  therefore,  the  science  of  religion 
is  as  little  a  modern  invention  as  religion  itself. 
Wherever  there  is  human  life,  there  is  religion,  and 
wherever  there  is  religion,  the  question  whence  it 
came  cannot  be  long  suppressed.  When  children 
once  begin  to  ask  questions,  they  ask  the  why  and 
the  wherefore  of  everything,  religion  not  excepted ; 
nay,  I  believe  that  the  first  problems  of  what  we  call 
philosophy  were  suggested  by  religion. 

It  has  sometimes  been  asked  why  Thales  should  be 
called  a  philosopher,  and  should  keep  his  place  on 
the  first  page  of  every  history  of  philosophy.  Many 
a  school-boy  may  have  wondered  why  to  say  that 
water  was  the  beginning  of  all  things  should  be 
called  philosophy.  And  yet,  childish  as  that  saying 
may  sound  to  us,  it  was  anything  but  childish  at  the 
time  of  Thales.  It  was  the  first  bold  denial  that  the 
gods  had  made  the  world  ;  it  was  the  first  open  pro- 
test against  the  religion  of  the  crowd  —  a  protest  that 
had  to  be  repeated  again  and  again  before  the  Greeks 
could  be  convinced  that  such  thinkers  as  Herakleitos 
(Reliquiae,  xx.)  and  Xenophanes  had  at  least  as  good 
a  right  to  speak  of  the  gods  or  of  God  as  Homer  and 
other  itinerant  singers. 

No  doubt,  at  that  early  time,  what  was  alone  im- 
portant was  to  show  that  what  was  believed  by  the 
crowd  was  purely  fanciful.  To  ask  how  those  fanci- 


8  THE  PERCEPTION   OF   THE  INFINITE. 

ful  opinions  of  the  crowd  had  arisen,  was  a  problem 
belonging  to  a  later  age.  Still,  even  that  problem 
was  not  entirely  absent  from  the  minds  of  the  earliest 
thinkers  of  Greece  ;  for  no  one  could  have  given  the 
answer  ascribed  to  Herakleitos  who  had  not  asked 
himself  the  question  which  we  ask  ourselves  to-day  : 
What,  then,  is  the  origin  of  religion  ?  or,  to  put  it 
into  more  modern  language,  How  is  it  that  we  believe, 
that  we  accept  what,  as  we  are  told  by  enemy  and 
friend,  cannot  be  supplied  to  us  by  our  senses  or  es- 
tablished by  our  reason  ? 

DIFFERENCE  BETWEEN  ANCIENT  AND  MODERN  BE- 
LIEF. 

It  may  be  said  that,  when  Herakleitos  pondered  on 
ofycri?,  or  belief,  he  meant  something  very  different 
from  what  we  mean  by  religion.  No  doubt  he  did ; 
for  if  there  is  a  word  that  has  changed  from  century 
to  century,  and  has  a  different  aspect  in  every  country 
in  which  it  is  used  —  nay,  which  conveys  peculiar 
shades  of  meaning,  as  it  is  used  by  every  man, 
woman,  or  child  —  it  is  religion.  In  our  ordinary 
language  we  use  religion  in  at  least  three  different 
senses ;  first,  as  the  object  of  belief ;  secondly,  as  the 
power  of  belief;  thirdly,  as  the  manifestation  of  be- 
lief, whether  in  acts  of  worship  or  in  acts  of  real  piety. 

The  same  uncertainty  prevails  in  other  languages. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  translate  our  word  religion 
into  Greek  or  Sanskrit;  nay,  even  in  Latin,  religio 
does  by  no  means  cover  all  that  religion  comprehends 
in  English.  We  need  not  be  surprised,  therefore, 
at  the  frequent  misunderstandings,  and  consequent 
wranglings,  between  those  who  write  on  religion, 
without  at  least  having  made  so  much  clear  to  them- 


EDUCATION  AND  PREPARATION. 


HEKRY  MARTYN  was  born  in  England  on  the  south- 
western coast  of  Truro,  February  18,  1781.  His  father, 
Mr.  John  Martyn,  worked  in  the  mines.  He  was  not  edu- 
cated but  was  very  fond  of  learning.  The  miners  were  in 
the  habit  of  working  and  resting  alternately  every  four 
hours.  Mr.  John  Martyn  spent  many  of  his  rest  intervals  in 
study,  and  so  by  diligence  and  education  raised  himself  to  a 
higher  position,  and  became  a  clerk  in  the  office  of  a  mer- 
chant in  Truro.  When  Henry  was  seven  years  old,  he  went 
to  school  to  Dr.  Cardew.  From  his  earliest  years  all  who 
knew  him  considered  him  a  very  interesting  and  promising 
child.  Dr.  Cardew  says  his  proficiency  in  the  classics 
exceeded  that  of  his  schoolfellows;  he  was  of  a  lively,  cheer- 
ful temper  and  seemed  to  learn  without  application,  almost 
by  intuition.  But  he  was  not  robust,  and  loving  books 
better  than  sport,  and  having  a  peculiar  tenderness  and  inof- 
fensiveness  of  spirit,  he  was  often  abused  by  rude  and  coarse 
boys  in  the  school.  A  friendship  which  he  formed  at  this 
time  with  a  boy  older  than  himself  was  the  source  of  great 
comfort  and  advantage  to  him,  and  was  kept  up  throughout 
his  whole  life.  This  friend  often  protected  him  from  the 
bullies  of  the  play-ground.  At  this  school,  under  excellent 
tuition,  Henry  remained  until  fourteen  years  old,  when  he 
was  induced  to  offer  himself  as  a  candidate  for  a  vacant 
scholarship  at  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford.  Young  as 
he  was.  he  went  there  alone,  and  acquitted  himself  so  well, 
though  strongly  and  ably  opposed  by  competitors,  that  in 

5 


6  LIFE   OF   HENRY   MAKTYN. 

the  opinion  of  some  of  the  examiners  he  ought  to  have  been 
elected.  How  often  is  the  hand  of  God  seen  in  frustrating 
our  fondest  designs !  Speaking  of  this  disappointment  lie 
afterwards  wrote :  "  Had  I  remained  and  become  a  member 
of  the  university  at  that  time,  as  I  should  have  done  in  case 
of  success,  the  profligate  acquaintances  I  had  there  would 
have  introduced  me  to  scenes  of  debauchery,  in  which  I 
must  in  all  probability,  from  my  extreme  youth,  have  sunk 
forever." 

He  continued  after  this  with  Dr.  Cardew  till  1797,  and 
then  joired  his  school  friend  at  Cambridge  at  St.  John's 
College.  Here  he  obtained  a  place  in  the  first  class  at  the 
public  examination  in  December,  a  circumstance  which, 
joined  to  the  extreme  desire  he  had  to  gratify  his  father, 
encouraged  and  excited  him  to  study  with  increased  alacrity, 
and  as  the  fruit  of  this  application,  at  the  next  public  exami- 
nation in  the  summer  he  reached  the  second  station  in  the 
first  class,  a  point  of  elevation  which  "flattered  his  pride 
not  a  little."  At  this  time  he  appeared  in  the  eye  of  the 
world  most  amiable  and  commendable,  outwardly  moral, 
unwearied  in  application,  and  exhibited  marks  of  no  ordinary 
talent.  One  exception  to  this  statement  is  to  be  found  in  an 
irritability  of  temper  arising  perhaps  from  the  treatment  he 
had  received  at  school.  On  one  occasion  in  sudden  anger,  he 
threw  a  knife  at  the  head  of  another  boy,  which  providen- 
tially missed  him  and  was  left  trembling  in  the  wall;  but  it 
was  a  narrow  escape,  and  might  have  proved  fatal.  Though 
not  a  Christian  at  this  time,  he  was  under  two  strong  influ- 
ences for  good,  one  from  his  religious  friend  in  college,  the 
other  from  his  sister  in  Cornwall,  a  Christian  of  a  meek,  heav- 
enly and  affectionate  spirit.  He  paid  a  visit  to  his  home  in 
the  summer  of  1799,  carrying  with  him  no  small  degree  of 


LIFE   OF   HENRY   MARTYR.  7 

academical  honor.  It  may  be  well  supposed  that  to  a  sister 
such  as  we  have  described,  her  brother's  spiritual  welfare 
would  be  a  most  serious  and  anxious  concern ;  and  that  she 
often  conversed  with  him  on  the  subject  of  religion  we  know 
from  his  own  declaration.  The  first  result  of  her  tender  exhor- 
tations and  earnest  endeavors  was  very  discouraging ;  a 
violent  conflict  took  place  in  her  brother's  mind  between  his 
conviction  of  the  truth  of  what  she  urged,  and  his  love  of 
the  world ;  and  for  the  present,  the  latter  prevailed.  Yet, 
sisters  similarly  circumstanced  may  learn  from  this  case,  not 
merely  their  duty,  but  also,  from  the  final  result,  the  success 
they  may  anticipate  in  the  faithful  clischargeaof  it 

"At  the  examination  at  Christmas,  1799,"  he  writes:  "I 
was  first,  and  the  account  of  it  pleased  my  father  prodig- 
iously, who,  I  was  told,  was  in  great  health  and  spirits. 
What,  then,  was  my  consternation  when  in  January  I  received 
an  account  of  his  death ! "  Most  poignant  were  his  suffer- 
ings under  this  affliction,  which  led  him  to  God  for  comfort 
in  prayer  and  Bible  study.  He  says:  "I  began  with  the 
Acts,  and  found  myself  insensibly  led  to  inquire  more  attent- 
ively into  the  doctrines  of  the  Apostles."  "Writing  to  his 
sister,  having  announced  shortly  and  with  much  simplicity 
that  his  name  stood  first  upon  the  list  at  the  college  examina- 
tion of  the  summer  of  1800,  he  says  :  "  What  a  blessing  it  is 
for  me  that  I  have  such  a  sister  as  you,  my  dear  S.,  who  have 
been  so  instrumental  in  keeping  me  in  the  right  way.  After 
the  death  of  our  father  you  know  I  was  extremely  low 
spirited,  and  like  most  other  people  began  to  consider 
seriously  without  any  particular  determination,  that  invisible 
world  to  which  he  was  gone  and  to  which  I  must  one  day  go. 
Soon  I  began  to  attend  more  diligently  to  the  words  of  our 
Savior  in  the  New  Testament,  and  to  devour  them  with 


8  LIFE    OF    lIKNiiY    MAltTYtf, 

delight,  when  the  offers  of  mercy  and  forgiveness  were  made 
so  freely ;  I  supplicated  to  be  made  partaker  of  the  covenant 
of  grace  with  eagerness  and  hope,  and  thanks  be  to  the  ever- 
blessed  Trinity  for  not  leaving  me  without  comfort."  How 
cheering  to  his  sister  it  must  have  been  to  receive  at  a 
moment  of  deep  sorrow  such  a  communication  as  this !  Uow 
salutary  to  his  own  mind  to  have  possessed  so  near  a  relation 
to  whom  he  could  thus  freely  open  the  workings  of  his  heart. 
At  this  time  he  also  received  great  benefit  from  attendance 
on  the  faithful  ministry  of  Rev.  Charles  Simeon,  under 
whose  pastoral  instructions  he  himself  declares  that  he. "grad- 
ually acquired  more  knowledge  in  divine  things."  With  this 
excellent  man  he  had  the  most  friendly  and  unreserved  inter- 
course. Mr.  Martyn  received  his  first  impressions  of  the 
transcendent  excellence  of  the  Christian  ministry  of  Mr. 
Simeon,  from  which  it  was  but  a  short  step  to  choose  this 
calling  for  his  own,  for  until  now  he  had  intended  to  devote 
himself  to  the  law  "  chiefly,"  he  confesses,  "  because  he  could 
not  consent  to  be  poor  for  Christ's  sake." 

In  January,  1801,  the  highest  academical  honor,  that  of 
"senior  wrangler,"  was  a\varded  to  him  before  the  comple- 
tion of  his  twentieth  year.  His  description  of  his  feelings  on 
this  occasion  is  remarkable :  "  I  obtained  my  highest  wishes, 
but  was  surprised  to  find  that  I  had  grasped  a  shadow."  So 
impossible  it  is  for  earthly  distinction  to  fill  and  satisfy  the 
mind. 

In  March,  1802,  after  another  rigid  examination,  Mr.  Mar- 
tyn was  chosen  Fellow  of  St.  Johns,  a  situation  honorable  to 
the  society  and  gratifying  to  himself.  Soon  after  he  obtained 
first  prize  for  best  Latin  prose  composition  over  many  com- 
petitors of  classical  celebrity,  and  this  was  the  more  remark- 
able, as  his  studies  had  been  almost  entirely  in  mathematics. 


LIFE  OP  HENRY  MAKTYN.  9 

Henry  Martyn's  attention  was  called  to  the  great  cause 
of  Foreign  Missions  by  some  remarks  of  Rev.  Mr.  Simeon  on 
the  work  of  Carey  in  India,  but  more  particularly  by  read- 
ing the  memoir  of  David  Brainerd,  who  preached  with  apos- 
tolic zeal  and  success  to  the  North  American  Indians,  and 
who  finished  a  course  of  self-denying  labors  for  his  Eedeemer 
with  unspeakable  joy  at  the  early  age  of  thirty -two.  Henry 
Martyn's  soul  was  filled  with  holy  emulation,  and  after  deep 
consideration  and  fervent  prayer  he  was  at  length  fixed  in  a 
resolution  to  imitate  his  example.  Nor  let  it  be  conceived 
that  he  could  adopt  this  resolution  without  the  severest  con- 
flict in  his  mind,  for  he  was  endued  with  the  truest  sensi- 
bility of  heart,  and  was  susceptible  of  the  warmest  and  ten- 
derest  attachments.  No  one  could  exceed  him  in  love  for 
his  country,  or  in  affection  for  his  friends,  and  few  could 
surpass  him  in  an  exquisite  relish  for  the  various  and  refined 
enjoyments  of  a  social  and  literary  life.  How  then  could  it 
fail  of  being  a  moment  of  extreme  anguish  when  he  came  to 
the  deliberate  resolution  of  leaving  forever  all  he  held  dear 
upon  earth  ?  But  he  was  fully  satisfied  that  the  glory  of 
that  Savior  who  loved  him  and  gave  Himself  for  him  would 
be  promoted  by  his  going  forth  to  preach  to  the  heathen. 
He  considered  their  pitiable  and  perilous  condition;  he 
thought  on  the  value  of  their  immortal  souls ;  he  remembered 
the  last  solemn  injunction  of  his  Lord,  "  Go  teach  all 
nations," — an  injunction  never  revoked,  and  commensurate 
with  that  most  encouraging  promise,  "  Lo,  I  am  with  you 
alway,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world."  Actuated  by  these 
motives,  he  offered  himself  as  a  missionary  to  the  society  for 
Missions,  and  from  that  time  stood  prepared  with  childlike 
simplicity  and  unshaken  constancy  to  go  to  any  part  of  the 
world  whither  it  might  be  deemed  expedient  to  send  him. 


10  LIFE   OF   IIENKY    MARTYN. 

In  the  early  part  of  1804,  Mr.  Martyn's  plans  of  becom- 
ing a  missionary  were  dampened  by  the  loss  of  his  slender 
patrimony,  and  as  his  sister  was  also  involved  in  the  calamity, 
it  appeared  hardly  justifiable  for  him  to  go  away.  After 
some  delay  his  friends  obtained  for  him  the  position  of  chap- 
lain to  the  East  India  Company,  and  so  the  obstacles  which 
detained  him  were  removed. 

The  time  of  the  delay  was  spent  in  zealous  service  for  his 
divine  Master.  He  was  associated  with  Rev.  Mr.  Simeon  as 
curate  and  preached  with  great  zeal  and  unction,  often  to 
very  large  audiences,  and  sometimes  with  such  unsparing 
denunciation  of  common  sins  as  to  awaken  opposition.  lie 
considered  it  his  duty  to  rebuke  iniquity,  and  on  one  occasion 
severely  reproved  a  student  for  shocking  levity, — reading  a 
play  with  some  young  ladies  while  their  father  lay  dying. 
He  feared  the  result  of  this  might  be  estrangement  from  his 
friend,  but  prayed  earnestly  that  it  might  lead  to  his  awak- 
ening. This  prayer  was  answered,  and  afterwards  this  very 
friend  became  his  beloved  associate  in  missionary  work  in 
India. 

In  very  early  youth  Mr.  Martyn  became  fondly  attached 
to  a  young  lady  named  Lydia  Grenfell.  She  considered  her- 
self his  superior  in  social  position.  The  memoirs  all  speak  of 
her  as  estimable,  and  we  infer  from  the  little  that  is  said 
that  she  somewhat  indifferently  accepted  Henry  Martyn's 
homage,  but  she  did  not  wholeheartedly  and  generously 
respond.  What  a  contrast  to  the  beloved  and  devoted  Har- 
riet Newell,  who  was  not  afraid  to  risk  all  for  Christ,  and 
counted  not  her  life  dear  even  unto  the  death !  It  was  Miss 
Grenfell's  greatest  honor  that  Henry  Martyn  would  have 
made  her  his  wife,  but  she  declined  the  honor,  and  yet  gave 
him  encouragement,  for  their  correspondence  only  ended  with 


LIFE   OF   IIENEY   MAETYN.  11 

his  life,  and  his  very  last  writing  was  a  letter  to  her.  He  begged 
her  with  all  the  eloquence  of  a  lonely  and  devoted  heart  to 
come  out  to  him  after  he  had  gone  to  India,  arranging  every 
detail  for  her  comfort  with  thoughtful  tenderness,  and  urg- 
ing and  encouraging  her  and  lavishing  upon  her  an  affection 
that  would  have  crowned  and  enriched  her  life.  We  are  left 
to  infer  from  the  history  that  she  did  love  him  in  her  way, 
but  if  she  had  shared  his  consecration  and  gone  with  him  and 
taken  care  of  him,  and  cheered  and  comforted  him,,  and 
made  for  him  a  happy  restful  home,  as  some  missionary 
wives  have  done  in  self-denying  foreign  fields,  what  a  bless- 
ing she  might  have  been,  and  her  life,  how  fruitful,  and  her 
memory,  how  fragrant !  As  it  was,  she  has  this  distinction, 
that  she  was  Henry  Martyn's  disappointment  and  trial  and 
discipline.  No  one  less  tender  and  sensitive  than  Henry 
Martyn  can  appreciate  all  he  suffered  on  this  account ;  but 
he  made  it,  like  all  the  other  great  sorrows  of  his  life,  a  cross 
on  which  to  be  crucified  with  Christ. 

He  writes  to  his  dear  sister  S.:  "When  I  sometimes  offer 
up  supplications  with  strong  crying  to  God  to  bring  down  my 
spirit  into  the  dust  I  endeavor  calmly  to  contemplate  the 
infinite  majesty  of  the  most  high  God  and  my  own  mean- 
ness and  wickedness,  or  else  I  quietly  tell  the  Lord,  who 
knows  the  heart,  I  Avould  give  Him  all  the  glory  of  everything 
if  I  could.  But  the  most  effectual  way  I  have  ever  found  is 
to  lead  away  my  thoughts  from  myself  and  my  own  concerns 
.by  praying  for  all  my  friends,  for  the  church,  the  world, 
the  nation,  and  especially  by  beseeching  that  God  would 
glorify  His  own  great  name  by  converting  all  nations  to  the 
obedience  of  faith,  also  by  praying  that  he  would  put  more 
abundant  honor  on  those  Christians  whom  he  seems  to  have 
honored  especially,  and  whom  we  see  to  be  manifestly  our 
superiors." 


12  LIFE   OF   HENRY   MA.KTYN. 

In  spite  of  Henry  Martyn's  beautiful  humility,  honor 
after  honor  was  heaped  upon  him  by  his  admiring  and 
appreciative  Alma  Mater.  Three  times  he  was  chosen  ex- 
aminer, and  discharged  the  duties  of  this  office  with  great 
care  and  faithfulness. 

As  the  time  approaches  for  his  parting  from  all  he  holds 
dear,  especially  the  beloved  L.,  our  hearts  go  out  to  him  in 
irrepressible  sympathy.  He  writes,  "parted  with  L.  for- 
ever in  this  life  with  a  sort  of  uncertain  pain  which  I  know 
will  increase  to  greater  violence." 

And  these  forebodings  were  but  too  soon  realized.  For 
many  succeeding  days  his  mental  agony  was  extreme,  yet  he 
could  speak  to  God  as  one  who  knew  the  great  conflict 
within  him.  Yet  while  the  waves  and  billows  are  going  over 
him  he  writes  from  these  depths,  "  I  never  had  so  clear  a  con- 
viction of  my  call  as  at  the  present.  Never  did  I  see  so 
much  the  exceeding  excellency  and  glory  and  sweetness  of 
the  work,  nor  had  so  much  the  favorable  testimony  of  my 
own  conscience,  nor  perceived  so  plainly  the  smile  of  God. 
Blessed  be  God,  I  feel  myself  to  be  His  minister.  This 
thought. which  I  can  hardly  describe  came  in  the  morning 
after  reading  Brainerd.  I  wish  for  no  service  but  the  service 
of  God,  to  labor  for  souls  on  earth  and  to  do  His  will  in 
heaven." 


LIFE   OF   HENRY   MAETYN.  13 


LIFE  IN  INDIA. 


ON  the  17th  of  July,  1805,  the  Union  East  Indiaman  con- 
veying Mr.  Martyn  sailed  from  Portsmouth.  Mr.  Mar- 
ty n  says :  "  Though  it  was  what  I  had  been  anxiously  look- 
ing forward  to  so  long,  yet  the  consideration  of  being  parted 
forever  from  my  friends,  almost  overcame  me.  My  feelings 
were  those  of  a  man  who  should  suddenly  be  told  that  every 
friend  he  had  in  the  world  was  dead." 

Though  suffering  much  in  mind  and  body  throughout 
the  long  and  tedious  voyage  of  nine  months,  Mr.  Martyn 
seeks  no  selfish  ease.  He  preaches,  reads  and  labors 
assiduously  with  officers,  passengers  and  crew,  and  shuns  not 
to  declare  the  whole  counsel  of  God,  even  the  unpalatable 
doctrine  of  the  future  punishment  of  the  wicked.  He  says: 
"  The  threats  and  opposition  of  these  men  made  me  willing 
to  set  before  them  the  truths  they  hated,  yet  I  had  no 
species  of  hesitation  about  doing  it.  They  said  they  would 
not  come  if  so  much  hell  was  preached,  but  I  took  for  my 
text,  '  The  wicked  shall  be  turned  into  hell  and  all  the 
nations  that  forget  God.'  The  officers  were  all  behind  my 
back  in  order  to  have  an  opportunity  of  retiring  in  case 
of  dislike.  H.,  as  soon  as  he  heard  the  text,  went  back  and 
said  he  would  hear  no  more  about  hell ;  so  he  employed  him- 
self in  feeding  the  geese.  However,  God  I  trust  blessed 
the  sermon  to  the  good  of  many ;  some  of  the  cadets  and 
many  of  the  soldiers  were  in  tears.  I  felt  an  ardor  and 
vehemence  in  some  parts  which  are  unusual  with  me.  After 
service  walked  the  deck  with  Mrs. — ;  she  spoke  with  so  much 


14  LIFE   OF   HENRY    MARTYN. 

simplicity  and  amiable  humility  that  I  was  full  of  joy  and 
admiration  to  God  for  a  sheep  brought  home  to  His  fold.  In 
the  afternoon  went  below  intending  to  read  to  them  at  the 
hatchway,  but  there  was  not  one  of  them,  so  I  could  get 
nothing  to  do  among  the  poor  soldiers." 

What  a  picture  revealing  Henry  Martyn's  character ! — 
the  contrasting  attributes  of  sternness  and  gentleness, 
his  martyrlike  determination  to  do  his  whole  duty  at  any 
cost  to  himself  from  suffering  and  insult,  the  keen 
shrinking  of  a  nature  so  refined  and  sensitive  from  coarseness 
and  abuse,  undeviating  yet  uncompromising,  bringing  to  our 
thoughts  the  Divine  Exemplar.  I  pass  by  the  incidents  of 
the  voyage,  including  mutiny,  sickness  and  death,  romantic 
stay  at  St.  Salvador,  battles  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  etc., 
eloquently  and  vividly  recorded. 

The  Friday  preceding  his  arrival  in  India  he  spends 
"in  praying  that  God  would  no  longer  delay  exerting  his 
power  in  the  conversion  of  the  eastern  nations.  I  felt 
emboldened  "  he  says, "  to  employ  the  most  familiar  petitions 
by  Is.  xii.  6,  7,  '  Keep  not  silence ;  give  him  no  rest,'  etc. 
Blessed  be  God  for  those  words !  They  are  like  a  cordial  to 
my  spirits,  because  if  the  Lord  is  not  pleased  by  me  or  during 
my  lifetime  to  call  the  Gentiles,  yet  He  is  not  offended  at 
my  being  urgent  with  Him  that  the  kingdom  of  God  may 
come." 

April  21,.  1806,  the  nine  months'  journey  is  complete,  and 
they  land  at  Madras.  Mr.  Martyn  gives  first  impressions  and 
description  of  the  natives,  ending  in  these  words  :  "  In  gen- 
eral, one  thought  naturally  occurred :  the  conversion  of  their 
poor  souls.  I  am  willing,  I  trust,  through  grace,  to  pass  my 
life  among  them  if  by  any  means  these  poor  people  may  be 
brought  to  God.  The  sight  of  men,  women  and  children,  all 


LIFE   OF    HENRY    MARTYN.  15 

idolaters,  makes  me  shudder  as  if  in  the  dominions  of  the 
prince  of  darkness.  Hearing  the  nymn,  '  Before  Jehovah's 
awful  throne, '  it  excited  a  train  of  affecting  thoughts  in  my 
mind." 

"  "Wide  as  the  world  is  thy  command."  Therefore  it  is 
easy  for  Thee  to  spead  abroad  Thy  holy  name.  But  oh,  how 
gross  the  darkness  here!  The  veil  of  the  covering  cast  over 
all  nations  seems  thicker  here;  the  friends  of  darkness  seem 
to  sit  in  sullen  repose  in  this  land.  What  surprises  me  is  the 
change  of  views  I  have  here  from  what  I  had  in  England. 
There  my  heart  expanded  with  hope  and  joy  at  the  prospect 
of  the  speedy  conversion  of  the  heathen;  but  here  the  sight 
of  the  apparent  impossibility  requires  a  strong  faith  to  sup- 
port the  spirits."  Ah,  how  vividly  this  describes  missionary 
experiences !  After  great  peril  from  storm  and  illness,  pass- 
ing up  the  Iloogly  from  Madras,  Mr.  Martyn  arrived  at 
Calcutta,  May  14.  In  this  city  for  years  had  been  a  band  of 
English  Christians  faithfully  praying  for  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  in  that  dark  land,  and  into  the  home  of  one  of  these, 
Rev.  David  Brown,  was  Mr.  Martyn  received  with  much 
affection.  A  pagoda  in  one  end  of  the  yard  on  the  river 
bank  was  fitted  up  for  him,  and  the  place  where  once  devils 
were  worshiped  now  became  a  Christian  oratory.  The 
first  experience  here  was  of  severe  illness  from  acclimating 
fever,  from  which  he  was  kindly  nursed  into  convalesence. 
He  then  applied  himself  earnestly  to  the  study  of  the  Hin- 
doostanee,  having  engaged  a  Brahmin  as  a  teacher.  Here 
he  witnessed  with  horror  the  cruel  and  debasing  rites  of 
heathenism.  The  blaze  of  a  funeral  pile  caused  him  one  day 
to  hasten  to  the  rescue  of  a  burning  widow  who  was  con- 
sumed before  his  eyes.  And  in  a  dark  wood  he  heard  the 
sound  of  cymbals  and  drums  calling  the  poor  natives  to  the 


16  LIFE   OF   HENRY   MARTYN. 

worship  of  devils,  and  saw  them  prostrate  with,  their  fore- 
heads to  the  ground  before  a  black  image  in  a  pagoda  sur- 
rounded with  burning  lights — a  sight  which  he  contemplated 
with  overwhelming  compassion,  "  shivering  as  if  standing  in 
the  neighborhood  of  hell." 

Mr.  Martyn's  plain  and  pungent  preaching  was  a  great 
offense  to  some  of  the  easy-going  formalists  of  the  English 
church  at  Calcutta,  and  some  of  the  ministry  attacked  him 
bitterly  from  their  pulpits,  declaring,  for  instance,  that  to 
affirm  repentance  to  be  the  gift  of  God  and  to  teach  that 
nature  is  wholly  corrupt,  is  to  drive  men  to  despair,  and  that 
to  suppose  the  righteousness  of  Christ  sufficient  to  justify  is 
to  make  it  unnecessary  to  have  any  of  our  own.  Though 
compelled  to  listen  to  such  downright  heresies,  to  hear  him- 
self described  as  knowing  neither  what  he  said  nor  whereof 
he  affirmed,  and  as  aiming  only  to  gratify  self  sufficiency, 
pride  and  uncharitableness, — "  I  rejoiced/'  said  this  meek 
and  holy  man,  "  to  receive  the  Lord's  supper  afterwards ; — 
as  the  solemnities  of  that  blessed  ordinance  sweetly  tended 
to  soothe  any  asperity  of  mind,  and  I  think  that  I  adminis- 
tered the  cup  to and with  sincere  good  will." 

September  13,  1806,  Mr.  Martyn  received  his  appoint- 
ment to  Singapore.  A  farewell  meeting  of  great  interest  was 
held  in  his  pagoda,  followed  by  a  tender  parting  from  the 
family  who  had  been  so  kind  to  him,  and  two  fellow  labor- 
ers who,  following  his  bright  example,  had  just  come  out 
from  England.  The  voyage  to  Singapore  was  performed  in  a 
budgero,  a  small  boat  with  a  cabin,  in  which  he  studied  and 
translated  and  prayed  while  making  the  seventeen  or 
eighteen  miles  a  day  of  the  six- weeks'  journey.  At  night  the 
boat  was  fastened  to  the  shore.  His  journal  record  of  these 
days  is  very  interesting  and  very  characteristic.  He  says : 


LIFE   OF   HENRY   MAKTTN.  17 

"  October  27.  Arrived  at  Berhampore.  In  the  evening 
walked  out  to  the  hospital  in  which  there  were  150  Euro- 
pean soldiers  sick.  I  was  talking  to  a  man  said  to  be  dying, 
when  a  surgeon  entered.  I  went  up  and  made  some  apology 
for  entering  the  hospital.  It  was  my  old  school-fellow 

and  townsman, .     The  remainder  of  the  evening  he  spent 

with  me  in  my  budgero. 

"  October  28.  Rose  very  early  and  was  at  the  hospital 
.at  daylight.  Waited  there  a  long  time  wandering  up  and 
down  the  wards  in  hopes  of  inducing  the  men  to  get  up  and 
assemble,  but  it  was  in  vain.  I  left  three  books  with  them 
and  \vent  away  amidst  the  sneers  and  titters  of  the  common 
soldiers.  Certainly  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  crosses  I  am 
called  to  bear  to  take  pains  to  make  people  hear  me.  It  is 
such  a  struggle  between  a  sense  of  propriety  and  modesty 
on  the  one  hand,  and  a  sense  of  duty  on  the  other,  that  I 
find  nothing  equal  to  it.  I  could  force  my  way  anywhere, 
in  order  to  introduce  a  brother  minister ;  but  for  myself,  I 
act  with  hesitation  and  pain. 

"  Walking  out  into  a  village  where  the  boat  stopped  for 
the  night  I  found  the  worshipers  of  Kali  by  the  sound  of 
their  drums  and  cymbals.  Invited  by  the  Brahmins  to  walk 
in  I  entered  and  asked  a  few  questions  aj)out  the  idol.  The 
Brahmin  who  spoke  bad  Hindoostanee  disputed  with  great 
heat,  and  his  tongue  ran  faster  than  I  could  follow,  and  the 
people,  about  one  hundred,  shouted  applause.  I  continued 
my  questions  and  among  other  things  asked  if  what  I  had 
heard  of  Vishnu  and  Brahma  was  true,  which  he  confessed 
I  forbore  to  press  him  with  the  consequences,  which  he  seemed 
to  feel ;  and  then  I  told  him  what  was  my  belief.  The  man 
grew  quite  mild  and  said  it  was  chula  ~bat  (good  words),  and 
asked  me  seriously  at  last  what  I  thought,  '  Was  idol  worship 

2 


18  LIFE   OF   HENRY    MARTYN. 

true  or  false  ? '  I  felt  it  a  matter  of  thankfulness  that  I  could 
make  known  the  truth  of  God  though  a  stammerer  and  that 
I  had  declared  it  in  the  presence  of  the  devil.  And  this  also  I 
learnt,  that  the  power  of  gentleness  is  irresistible.  I  never 
was  more  astonished  than  at  the  change  in  deportment  of 
this  hot-headed  Brahmin.  .  .  .  Came  to  on  the  eastern 
bank  below  a  village  called  Ahgadup.  Wherever  I  walked 
the  women  fled  at  the  sight  of  me.  Some  men  were  sitting 
under  the  shed  dedicated  to  their  goddess ;  a  lamp  was  burn- 
ing in  her  place.  A  conversation  soon  began,  but  there  was 
no  one  who  could  speak  Hindoostanee.  I  could  only  speak 
by  the  medium  of  my  Mussulman,  Musalchee.  They  said 
that  they  only  did  as  others  did,  and  that  if  they  were  wrong 
then  all  Bengal  was  wrong.  I  felt  love  for  their  souls,  and 
longed  for  utterance  to  declare  unto  these  poor  simple  people 
the  holy  gospel.  I  think  that  when  my  mouth  is  opened  I 
shall  preach  to  them  day  and  night. 

"October  31.  My  Moonshee  said,  'How  can  you  prove 
this  book  (the  gospel),  to  be  the  word  of  God  ? '  I  took  him 
to  walk  with  me  on  the  shore  that  we  might  discuss  the 
matter,  and  the  result  of  our  conversation  was  that  I  dis- 
covered that  the  Mussulmen  allow  the  gospel  to  be  in  general 
the  command  of  God,  though  the  words  of  it  are  not  His  as 
the  words  of  the  Koran  are,  and  contend  that  the  actual 
words  of  God  given  to  Jesus  were  burnt  by  the  Jews ;  that 
they  also  admit  the  New  Testament  to  have  been  in  force 
till  the  coming  of  Mohammed.  When  I  quoted  some  pas- 
sages which  proved  the  Christian  dispensation  to  be  the  final 
one,  he  allowed  it  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  divinity  of  the 
Koran,  but  said,  '  Then  those  words  of  the  gospel  must  be 
false.'  The  man  argued  and  asked  his  questions  seemingly 
in  earnest,  and  another  new  impression  was  left  upon  my 


LIFE   OF   HENKY   MAETYN.  19 

mind,  namely,  that  these  men  are  not  fools  and  that  all  inge- 
nuity and  clearness  of  reasoning  are  not  confined  to  England 
and  Europe.  I  seem  to  feel  that  these  descendants  of  Ham 
are  as  dear  to  God  as  the  haughty  sons  of  Japheth;  I  feel,  too, 
more  at  home  with  the  Scriptures  than  ever ;  everything  I  see 
gives  light  to,  and  receives  it  from,  the  Scriptures.  I  seem 
transported  back  to  the  ancient  times  of  the  Israelites  and 
the  Apostles.  My  spirit  felt  composed  after  the  dispute  by 
simply  looking  to  God  as  one  who  had  engaged  to  support 
His  own  cause  ;  and  I  saw  it  to  be  my  part  to  pursue  my  way 
through  the  wilderness  of  this  world,  looking  only  to  that 
redemption  which  daily  draweth  nigh.  How  should  this 
consideration  quell  the  tumult  of  anger  and  impatience  when 
I  cannot  convince  men  '  the  government  is  on  His  shoulders  \ ' 
Jesus  is  able  to  bear  the  weight  of  it ;  therefore  we  need  not 
be  oppressed  with  care  or  fear,  but  a  missionary  is  apt  to 
fancy  himself  an  Atlas. 

"  November  2.  Walking  on  shore  met  a  large  party.  I 
asked  if  any  of  them  could  read.  One  young  man  who 
seemed  superior  in  rank  to  the  rest,  said  he  could,  and  accord- 
ingly read  some  of  the  only  Nagree  tract  that  I  had.  I  then 
addressed  myself  boldly  to  them  and  told  them  of  the  gos- 
pel. When  speaking  of  the  inefficacy  of  the  religious  prac- 
tices of  the  Hindoos  I  mentioned  as  an  example  the  repeti- 
tion of  the  name  of  Earn.  The  young  man  assented  to  this 
and  said,  "  of  what  use  is  it? "  As  he  seemed  to  be  of  a  pen- 
sive turn  and  said  this  with  marks  of  disgust,  I  gave  him  a 
Nagree  Testament,  the  first  I  have  given.  May  God's  bless- 
ing go  along  with  it  and  cause  the  eyes  of  the  multitudes  to  be 
opened.  The  men  said  they  should  be  glad  to  receive  tracts, 
so  I  sent  them  back  a  considerable  number.  The  idea  of 
printing  the  parables  in  proper  order  with  a  short  explana- 


20  LIFE   OF    HENKY    MARTYN. 

tion  to  each,  for  the  purpose  of  distribution  and  as  school 
books,  suggested  itself  to  me  to-night  and  delighted  me  pro- 
digiously. ...  A  Mussulman,  when  he  received  one  of  the 
tracts  and  found  what  it  was,  was  greatly  alarmed,  and  after 
many  awkward  apologies,  returned  it,  saying  that  'a  man 
who  had  his  legs  in  two  different  boats,  was  in  danger  of 
sinking  between  them.' " 

Established  at  Singapore,  Mr.  Martyn  began  upon  three 
different  lines  of  work,  establishing  schools,  attaining  readi- 
ness in  Hindoostanee  so  as  to  preach  the  gospel  in  that  lan- 
guage, and  translating  the  Scriptures  and  religious  books. 
To  his  great  discouragement  he  was  informed  by  the  Pundit 
that  every  four  miles  the  language  changed,  so  that  a  book 
in  the  dialect  of  one  district  would  be  unintelligible  to  the 
people  of  another.  Being  advised  to  learn  Sanscrit,  he  took 
up  this  language  with  great  zeal.  The  commencement  of 
Mr.  Martyn's  ministry  amongst  the  Europeans  of  Singapore 
was  not  of  such  a  kind  as  to  either  gratify  or  encourage  him. 
At  first  he  read  prayers  to  the  soldiers  at  the  barracks  from 
the  drumhead,  and  as  there  were  no  seats  provided,  was 
desired  to  omit  the  sermon.  Afterwards  more  decent 
arrangements  being  made,  the  families  came  in ;  but  taking 
offense  at  his  evangelical  plainness,  they  asked  that  he  should 
desist  from  extempore  preaching.  These  European  members 
of  his  flock  were  jealous  and  angry  at  his  constant  efforts  for 
the  salvation  of  the  heathen  natives.  They  thought  it  much 
beneath  the  dignity  of  an  English  chaplain  to  care  for  these 
degraded  souls.  Some  of  Mr.  Martyn's  duties  as  chaplain 
were  exceedingly  onerous.  On  several  occasions  he  was  sum- 
moned to  distant  places  involving  long  and  dangerous  jour- 
neys to  perform  a  marriage  ceremony.  On  these  journeys  he 
suffered  severely,  and  they  were  a  great  draft  upon  his  very 


LIFE    OF    HENRY   MAKTYN.  21 

delicate  health ;  always  weak  and  languid,  and  often  alarm- 
ingly disordered.  Yet  through  all  he  continued  to  labor 
incessantly.  Every  Sabbath  he  held  at  least  four  services :  at 
7  for  Europeans ;  at  2  for  Hindoos,  about  two  hundred  in 
attendance ;  in  the  afternoon  at  the  hospital ;  in  the  evening 
in  his  own  room  for  the  soldiers.  In  his  household  were  two 
natives  who  assisted  in  his  studies  and  translations,  the  Moon- 
shee  and  the  Pundit,  with  whom  he  held  long  disputes  and 
with  whom  he  labored  daily,  though  unsuccessfully,  to  bring 
them  to  faith  in  Christ.  He  says,  "translating  the  epistle  of 
St.  John  with  the  Moonshee,  I  asked  him  what  he  thought 
of  those  passages  which  so  strongly  express  the  doctrines  of 
the  Trinity  and  of  the  divinity  of  Christ.  He  said  he  never 
would  believe  it,  because  the  Koran  declared  it  sinful  to  say 
that  God  had  any  Son.  I  told  him  that  he  ought  to  pray 
that  God  would  teach  him  what  the  truth  really  is.  He  said 
he  had  no  occasion  on  this  subject,  as  the  word  of  God  was 
express.  I  asked  him  whether  some  doubt  ought  not  to  arise 
in  his  mind  whether  the  Koran  is  the  word  of  God.  He 
grew  angry,  and  I  felt  hurt  and  vexed.  I  should  have  done 
better  to  have  left  the  words  of  the  chapter  with  him  with- 
out saying  anything.  I  went  also  too  far  with  the  Pundit  in 
arguing  against  his  superstition,  for  he  also  grew  angry."  If 
any  qualification  seems  necessary  to  a  missionary  in  India  it 
is  wisdom — operating  in  the  regulation  of  the  temper  and  the 
due  improvement  of  opportunities.  Mr.  Martyn  needed  the 
heavenly  gift  of  wisdom  also  in  the  management  of  his  native 
schools,  five  or  six  of  which  were  supported  by  himself  in 
Singapore.  Little  by  little  he  succeeded  in  introducing  as  a 
text-book  a  part  of  the  Bible  —  his  own  translation  of  the 
sermon  on  the  Mount  and  the  Parables.  He  was  called  to  do 
more  and  more  of  this  work  of  translating  the  Scriptures, 


22  LIFE   OF   HENKY   MAKTYN. 

and  was  persuaded  by  the  Rev.  David  Brown  not  only  to 
continue  the  Hindoostanee,  but  to  superintend  the  translation 
of  the  Scriptures  into  Persian.  He  engaged  in  it  at  once 
with  zeal.  He  writes:  "The  time  fled  imperceptibly  while 
so  delightfully  engaged  in  the  translations ;  the  days  seemed 
to  have  passed  like  a  moment.  What  do  I  not  owe  to  the 
Lord  for  permitting  me  to  take  part  in  a  translation  of  His 
word?  Never  did  I  see  such  wonder  and  wisdom  and  love 
in  the  blessed  Book  as  since  I  have  been  obliged  to  study 
every  expression.  Employed  a  good  while  at  night  in  con- 
sidering a  difficult  passage,  and  being  much  enlightened 
respecting  it,  I  went  to  bed  full  of  astonishment  at  the  won- 
der of  God's  Word.  Never  before  did  I  see  anything  of  the 
beauty  of  the  language  and  the  importance  of  the  thoughts 
as  I  do  now.  What  a  source  of  perpetual  delight  have  I  in 
the  precious  Word  of  God ! " 

This  ecstacy  of  enthusiasm  in  most  successful  and  conge- 
nial labor  was  suddenly  dashed  by  a  great  wave  of  sorrow 
which  came  to  Mr.  Marty n  in  the  news  of  the  death  of  his 
eldest  sister.  To  missionaries  in  foreign  lands  such  news  is 
especially  bitter,  and  to  recover  from  such  a  shock  and  sense 
of  irreparable  loss  seems  almost  impossible.  The  mind, 
unsatisfied  with  details  of  the  sad  event,  is  left  in  shadow 
which  deepens  into  heavy  gloom.  Mr.  Martyn  was  all  alone 
and  felt  it  keenly  and  inexpressibly.  Some  of  his  most  inti- 
mate and  sympathetic  friends  at  this  time,  realizing  how  it 
was  not  good  for  him  to  be  alone,  encouraged  him  to  renew  his 
matrimonial  offer  to  his  ever  beloved  L.  After  her  refusal 
he  says,  "  The  Lord  sanctify  this,  and  since  this  last  desire  of 
my  heart  is  also  withheld  may  I  turn  away  forever  from  the 
world  and  henceforth  live  forgetful  of  all  but  God.  With 
Thee,  O  my  God,  is  no  disappointment.  I  shall  never  have  to 


LIFE   OF   HENRY   MAETTN.  23 

regret  that  I  have  loved  Thee  too  well.  Thou  hast  said, 
'  delight  thyself  in  the  Lord,  and  he  shall  give  thee  the 
desires  of  thy  heart.' ': 

Could  sweeter  words  than  these  be  expressed  in  any 
language!  Could  greater  depths  of  submission  or 
heights  of  consecration  be  attained !  They  deserve  to  be 
recorded  on  imperishable  marble  or  blazoned  on  the  sky  in 
sight  of  all,  and  received  as  the  confession  of  every  Christian 
heart,  to  the  honor  and  praise  of  Him  who  gave  such  glori- 
ous victory  to  this  tried  soldier  of  the  cross. 

Providentially  for  Mr.  Martyn's  comfort  his  thoughts 
were  much  occupied  after  this  by  the  arrival  of  his  coadju- 
tors in  the  work  of  translation,  one  of  these,  Mirza  of 
Benares,  well  known  in  India  as  an  eminent  Hindoostanee 
scholar;  the  other  Sabat  the  Arabian,  since  but  too  well 
known  both  in  India  and  England  by  his  rejection  of  that 
faith  which  he  then  appeared  to  profess  in  sincerity  and  faith. 
In  the  latter  of  these  Mr.  Martyn  confidently  trusted  that 
he  had  found  a  Christian  brother  with  respect  to  the  reality 
of  his  belief  in  Christianity,  although  Mr.  Martyn  imme- 
diately discovered  in  him  an  unsubdued  Arab  spirit,  and 
witnessed  with  pain  many  deflections  from  that  temper  and 
conduct  which  he  himself  so  eminently  exemplified;  yet, 
he  could  not  but  "  believe  all  things  and  hope  all  things," 
even  while  he  continued  to  suffer  much  from  him,  and  for  a 
length  of  time,  with  unparalleled  forbearance  and  kindness." 
Sabat' s  temper  was  a  continual  trial  and  mortification.  The 
very  first  Sabbath  in  Singapore,  imagining  he  was  not  treated 
with  sufficient  dignity,  he  left  the  church  before  service  in  great 
anger.  Often  in  the  midst  of  the  translation  he  would  come 
to  a  sudden  stop  and  refuse  to  go  on  for  the  most  trivial 
reasons,  sometimes  for  fear  that  Mirza  who  would  review  the 


21  LIFE   OF    HENRY    MAKTYN. 

work  might  have  part  of  the  honor.  About  this  time  Mr. 
Martyn  was  much  bereaved  by  the  removal  of  a  family  witii 
whom  he  had  lived  in  intimate  terms  of  Christian  intercourse. 
"  This  separation  affected  him  the  more  sensibly  because  it 
was  not  in  every  family  at  that  station  that  he  met  with  a 
kind  and  cordial  reception."  He  says,  "  I  called  on  one  of 
the  Singapore  families,  and  felt  my  pride  rise  at  the  uncivil 
manner  in  which  I  was  received.  I  was  disposed  at  first  to 
determine  never  to  visit  the  house  again,  but  I  remembered 
the  words, '  overcome  evil  with  good.' " 

In  the  month  of  March,  1808,  the  New  Testament  in  Ilin- 
doostanee  was  completed.  He  says,  "  I  have  read  and  cor- 
rected the  manuscript  till  my  eyes  ache ;  such  a  week  of 
labor  I  believe  I  have  never  passed.  The  heat  is  terrible,  often 
at  98  degrees,  the  nights  insupportable."  We  next  hear  of 
Mr.  Martyn  suffering  from  severe  illness  with  fever  and  ver- 
tigo, and  pained  with  the  thought  of  leaving  the  Persian 
gospels  unfinished  !  So  unselfish,  so  full  of  zeal !  Again  at 
work,  mercury  at  102  degrees.  "  Arabic  now  employs  my  few 
moments  of  leisure.  In  consequence  of  reading  the  Koran 
with  Sabat  audibly,  and  drinking  no  wine,  the  slander  has 
gone  forth  that  the  Singapore  Padre  has  turned  Mussulman. 

"June  6th.  To-day  we  have  completed  the  Persian  of  St. 
Matthew.  Sabat  desired  me  to  kneel  down  to  bless  God  for 
the  happy  event,  and  we  joined  in  praise  of  the  Father  of 
lights.  It  is  a  superb  performance  in  every  respect,  with 
elegance  enough  to  attract  the  careless  and  please  the  fas- 
tidious ;  it  contains  enough  of  Eternal  Life  to  save  the  reader's 
soul.  .  .  .  My  services  on  the  Lord's  day  always  leave 
me  with  a  pain  in  the  chest,  and  such  a  great  degree  of 
general  relaxation,  that  I  seldom  recover  it  till  Tuesday.  The 
society  still  meet  every  night  at  my  quarters,  and  though  we 


LIFE   OF   HENEY   MAETYN.  25 

have  lost  many  by  death,  others  are  raised  up  in  their  room. 
One  officer,  a  lieutenant,  is  also  given  to  me,  and  he  is  not 
only  a  brother  beloved,  but  a  constant  companion  and  nurse  ; 
so  you  must  feel  no  apprehension  that  I  should  be  left  alone 
in  sickness." 

In  April,  1809,  Mr. 'Martyn  removes  from  Dinapore  to 
Cawnpore.  Here  he  met  friendship  and  hospitality.  We 
quote  from  the  graceful  pen  of  Mrs.  Sherwood :  "  The  month 
of  April  in  the  upper  provinces  of  Hindoostan  is  one  of  the 
most  dreadful  months  for  traveling  throughout  the  year; 
indeed,  no  European  at  that  time  can  remove  from  place  to 
place,  but  at  the  risk  of  his  life. 

"  But  Mr.  Martyn  had  that  anxiety  to  begin  the  work  which 
his  heavenly  Father  had  given  him  to  do,  that  notwithstand- 
the  violent  heat,  he  traveled  from  Chunar  to  Cawnpore,  the 
space  of  about  four  hundred  miles.  At  that  time  as  I  well 
remember,  the  air  was  as  hot  and  dry  as  that  which  I  have 
sometimes  felt  near  the  mouth  of  a  large  oven,  no  friendly 
cloud  or  verdant  carpet  of  grass  to  relieve  the  eye  from  the 
strong  glare  of  the  rays  of  the  sun  pouring  on  the  sandy 
plains  of  the  Ganges.  Thus  Mr.  Martyn  traveled,  journeying 
night  and  day,  and  arrived  at  Cawnpore  in  such  a  state  that 
he  fainted  away  as  soon  as  he  entered  the  house.  When  we 
charged  him  with  the  rashness  of  hazarding  his  life  in  this  man- 
ner, he  always  pleaded  his  anxiety  to  get  to  the  great  work. 
He  remained  with  us  ten  days,  suffering  considerably  at  times 
from  fever  and  pain  in  the  che'st. 

"Mr.  Martyn's  removal  from  Dinapore  to  Cawnpore 
was  to  him  in  many  respects  a  very  unpleasant  arrangement. 
He  was  several  hundred  miles  farther  distant  from  Calcutta 
and  more  widely  separated  than  before  from  his  friend  Mr. 
Corrie.  He  had  new  acquaintances  to  form  at  his  new  abode, 


26  LIFE   OF   HENBY   MAKTYN. 

and  after  having  with  much  difficulty  procured  the  erection  of 
a  church  at  Dinapore  he  was  transported  to  a  spot  where 
none  of  the  conveniences,  much  less  the  decencies  and  solem- 
nities of  public  worship,  were  visible. 

"  We  find  him  soon  after  he  arrived  there  preaching  to  a 
thousand  soldiers  drawn  up  in  a  hollow  square,  when  the 
heat  was  so  great,  although  the  sun  had  not  risen,  that  many 
actually  dropped  down,  unable  to  support  it." 

Yet  Mr.  Martyn's  labors  were  not  abated.  Every  Sabbath 
at  dawn  were  prayers  and  sermon  with  the  regiment,  and 
again  at  eleven  at  the  house  of  the  general  of  the  station. 
In  the  afternoon  he  preached  to  a  crowd  of  poor  natives,  five, 
to  eight  hundred,  rude,  noisy,  wretched  beggars,  for  whose 
souls  he  felt  a  tender  care.  Again  in  the  evening,  the  best 
of  the  day,  he  had  a  meeting  with  the  more  devout  of  his 
flock.  These  ministrations  so  earnestly  performed  were  most 
exhausting,  yet  he  knew  riot  how  to  forego  them;  at  this 
time,  too,  from  England  came  the  sad  and  sudden  news  of  the 
death  of  his  sister,  the  one  who  had  led  him  to  Christ. 

The  alarming  state  of  his  health  made  some  change  neces- 
sary, and  Mr.  Marty n  was  urged  to  leave  India  and  make 
trial  of  a  sea  voyage.  His  Persian  New  Testament  had  been 
criticised  as  unfit  for  general  circulation,  being  written  in  a 
style  too  learned  and  exalted  for  the  comprehension  of  the 
common  people.  He  was  advised  to  visit  Persia  and  there 
revise  his  work  and  also  complete  his  version  in  Arabic,  almost 
finished.  Mr.  Brown,  his  devoted  friend,  and  the  Calcutta 
agent  of  the  British  and  Foreign  Bible  Society,  thus  writes: 
"Can  I  then  bring  myself  to  cut  the  string  and  let  you  go? 
I  confess  I  could  not  if  your  bodily  frame  were  strong,  and 
promised  to  last  for  half  a  century.  But  as  you  burn  with 
the  intenseness  and  rapid  blaze  of  heated  phosphorus,  why 


LIFE   OF   HENRY    MARTYN.  27 

should  \ve  not  make  the  most  of  you?  Your  flame  may  last 
as  long  and  perhaps  longer  in  Arabia,  than  in  India.  "Where 
should  the  Phoenix  build  her  odoriferous  nest,  but  in  the 
land  prophetically  called  '  the  blessed  ?'  and  where  shall  we 
ever  expect,  but  from  that  country,  the  true  Comforter  to 
come  to  the  nations  of  the  East  ?  I  contemplate  your  New 
Testament  springing  up,  as  it  were,  from  dust  and  ashes,  but 
beautiful  as  the  wings  of  a  dove  covered  with  silver,  and  his 
feathers  like  yellow  gold."  His  farewell  services  at  Cawn- 
pore  were  very  tender  and  affecting,  both  with  his  great  audi- 
ence of  natives  and  Englishmen.  Of  the  latter,  Mrs.  Sher- 
wood says :  "He  began  in  a  weak  and  faint  voice,  being  at 
that  time  in  a  very  bad  state  of  health ;  but,  gathering 
strength  as  he  proceeded,  he  seemed  as  one  inspired  from  on 
high.  Never  was  an  audience  more  affected.  The  next  day 
this  holy  and  heavenly  man  left  Cawmpore  and  the  society  of 
many  who  sincerely  loved  and  admired  him."  Stopping  to 
visit  the  friends  in  Calcutta,  the  Kev.  Mr.  Thomason  says : 
"  This  bright  and  lovely  jewel  first  gratified  our  eyes  on  Sat- 
urday last.  He  is  on  his  way  to  Arabia,  where  he  is  going  in 
pursuit  of  health  and  knowledge.  You  know  his  genius,  and 
what  gigantic  strides  he  takes  in  everything.  He  has  some 
great  plan  in  his  mind,  of  which  I  am  no  competent  judge; 
but  as  far  as  I  do  understand  it,  the  object  is  far  too  grand 
for  one  short  life,  and  much  beyond  his  feeble  and  exhausted 
frame.  Feeble  it  is,  indeed ;  how  fallen  and  changed !  His 
complaint  lies  in  his  lungs  and  appears  to  be  an  incipient  con- 
sumption. But  let  us  hope  the  sea  air  may  revive  him,  and 
that  change  may  do  him  essential  service  and  continue  his 
life  many  years.  In  all  other  respects  he  is  exactly  the  same 
as  he  was ;  he  shines  in  all  the  dignity  of  love,  and  seems  to 
carry  about  him  such  a  heavenly  majesty  as  impresses  the 


28  LIFE    OP   HENRY   MAETYN. 

mind  beyond  description.  But  if  he  talks  much,  though  i*, 
a  low  voice,  he  sinks,  and  you  are  reminded  of  his  being  dusv 
and  ashes."  Though  so  infirm,  Mr.  Martyn  preached  every 
Sabbath  of  his  visit,  and  his  last  sermon  on  the  anniversary 
of  the  Calcutta  Bible  Society  was  afterwards  printed  and 
entitled  "Christian  India,  or  an  appeal  on  behalf  of  nine 
hundred  thousand  Christians  in  India  who  want  the  Bible." 


LIFE   OF   HENKY    MAKTYN.  29 


LIFE  IN  PERSIA. 


FROM  this  time  a  change  comes  over  Mr.  Mar- 
tyn's  varied  life.  "We  have  seen  him  the  successful 
candidate  for  academical  distinctions — the  faithful  and  labo- 
rious pastor — the  self-denying  and  devoted  missionary — 'the 
indefatigable  translator — the  preacher  of  the  gospel  to  the 
heathen;  we  are  now  called  to  admire  in  him  the  coura- 
geous spirit  of  the  Christian  confessor. 

He  says,  on  his  voyage  towards  Persia :  "  All  down  the 
Bay  of  Bengal  I  could  do  nothing  but  sit  listless,  viewing 
the  wide  waste  of  water,  a  sight  that  would  have  been  beau- 
tiful had  I  been  well.  In  my  Hebrew  researches  I  scarcely 
ever  felt  so  discouraged.  All  the  knowledge  I  thought  I 
had  acquired  became  uncertain,  and  consequently  I  was 
unhappy.  It  was  in  vain  that  I  reflected  that  thousands  live 
and  die  happy  without  such  knowledge  as  I  am  in  search  of. 

"  Proposed  family  prayer  every  night  in  the  cabin — no 
objection  was  made. 

"  February  18,  anchored  off  Bombay.  This  day  I  fin- 
ished the  thirtieth  year  of  my  unprofitable  life,  the  age  at 
which  David  Brainerd  finished  his  course.  I  am  now  at  the 
the  age  at  which  the  Savior  of  men  began  his  ministry,  and 
and  at  which  John  the  Baptist  called  a  nation  to  repentance. 
Hitherto  I  have  made  my  youth  and  insignificance  an  excuse 
for  sloth  and  imbecility,  now  let  me  have  a  character  and 
act  boldly  for  God. 

"  March  5.     Feerog,  a  Parsee  who  is  considered  the  most 


30  LIFE   OF   HENRY    MARTYN. 

learned  man  here,  called  to  converse  about  religion.  He 
spoke  Persian  and  seemed  familiar  with  Arabic.  He  began  by 
saying  '  that  no  one  religion  had  more  evidences  of  its  truth 
than  another,  for  that  all  the  miracles  of  the  respective 
founders  depended  upon  tradition.  This  I  denied.  He 
acknowledged  that  the  writer  of  the  Zendavesta  was  not 
cotemporary  with  Zoroaster.  After  disputing  and  raising 
objections  he  was  left  without  an  answer,  but  continued  to 
cavil.  '  Why'  said  he,  '  did  the  Magi  see  the  star  in  the  East 
and  none  else  ?  from  what  part  of  the  East  did  they  come  ? 
and  how  was  it  possible  that  their  king  should  come  to 
Jerusalem  in  seven  days  2 '  The  last  piece  of  information  he 
had  from  the  Armenians.  I  asked  him  whether  he  had  any 
thoughts  of  changing  his  religion.  He  replied  with  a  con- 
temptuous smile,  'No,  every  man  is  safe  in  his  own  religion.' 
I  asked  him,  'What  sinners  must  do  to  obtain  pardon?' 
'Eepent,'  said  he.  I  asked,  'Would  repentance  satisfy  a 
creditor  or  a  judge?'  'Why,  is  it  not  said  in  the  gospel,' 
rejoined  he,  'that  we  must  repent ? '  I  replied, ' It  cannot  be 
proved  from  the  gospel  that  repentance  alone  is  sufficient,  or 
good  works,  or  both.'  '  Where  then  is  the  glory  of  salva- 
tion ? '  he  said;  I  replied,  '  In  the  atonement  of  Christ.'  '  All 
this '  said  he,  '  I  know,  but  so  the  Mohammedans  say,  that 
Ilosyn  was  an  atonement  for  the  sins  of  men.'  He  then 
began  to  criticise  the  translations  he  saw  on  the  table. 

"April  23.  Moscat,  Arabia.  Went  on  shore  and  met  the 
Yizier.  His  African  slave  argued  with  me  for  Mohammed 
and  did  not  know  how  to  let  me  go,  he  was  so  interested  in 
the  business." 

"April  25.  Gave  him  an  Arabic  copy  of  the  gospel, 
which  he  at  once  began  to  read,  and  carried  it  off  as  a  great 
prize,  which  I  hope  he  will  find  it  to  be." 


LIFE   OF    HENKY   MARTYN.  31 

"  Bushire,  Persia.  Called  on  the  governor,  a  Persian  Khan. 
He  was  very  particular  in  his  attentions.  Seated  me  on  his 
own  seat  and  then  sat  by  my  side.  After  the  usual  saluta- 
tions and  inquiries  the  calean  (pipe),  was  introduced,  then 
coffee  in  china  cups  placed  within  silver  ones,  then  calean, 
then  some  rose-water  syrup,  then  calean.  Observing  the 
windows  of  stained  glass,  I  began  to  question  him  about  the 
art  of  coloring  glass,  observing  that  the  modern  Europeans 
were  inferior  to  the  ancient  in  the  manufacture  of  the  article. 
He  expressed  his  surprise  that  Europeans,  who  were  so  skill- 
ful in  making  watches,  should  fail  in  any  handicraft  work. 
I  could  not  help  recollecting  the  Emperor  of  China's  sarcastic 
remark  on  the  Europeans  and  their  arts,  and  therefore  dropped 
the  subject.  On  his  calean — I  called  it  hookah  at  first,  but 
he  did  not  understand  me — I  noticed  several  little  paintings 
of  the  Virgin  and  child,  and  asked  him  whether  such  things 
were  not  unlawful  among  Mohammedans.  He  answered 
very  coolly  'Yes,'  as  much  as  to  say.  'What  then?'  I 
lamented  that  the  Eastern  Christians  should  use  such  things 
in  their  churches.  He  repeated  the  words  of  a  good  man 
who  was  found  fault  with  for  having  an  image  before  him 
•while  at  prayer,  "  God  is  nearer  to  me  than  that  image,  so 
that  I  do  not  see  it."  This  man,  I  afterwards  found,  is  like 
most  of  the  other  grandees  of  the  East,  a  murderer. 

"  On  the  30th  of  May,  our  Persian  dresses  were  ready, 
and  we  set  out  for  Shiraz.  The  Persian  dress  consists  of 
first,  stockings  and  shoes  in  one ;  next,  a  pair  of  large  blue 
trousers,  or  else  a  pair  of  huge  red  boots;  then  the  shirt,  then 
the  tunic,  and  above  it  the  coat,  both  of  chintz,  and  a  great 
coat.  I  have  here  described  my  own  dress,  most  of  which  I 
have  on  at  this  moment.  On  the  head  is  worn  an  enormous 
cone  made  of  the  skin  of  the  black  Tartar  sheep  with  the 


32  LIFE   OF    HENRY   MARTYN. 

wool  on.  If  to  this  description  of  my  dress  I  add  that  my 
beard  and  mustachios  have  been  suffered  to  vegetate  undis- 
turbed ever  since  I  left  India ;  that  I  am  sitting  on  a  Persian 
carpet,  in  a  room  without  tables  or  chairs,  and  that  I  bury  my 
hand  in  the  pillar  (rice),  without  waiting  for  spoon  or  plate, 
you  will  give  me  credit  for  being  already  an  accomplished 
Oriental. 

k'  At  ten  o'clock  on  the  30th  our  califa  began  to  move. 
It  consisted  chiefly  of  mules  with  a  few  horses.  I  wished  to 
have  a  mule,  but  the  muleteer  favored  me  with  his  own  pony ; 
this  animal  had  a  bell  fastened  to  its  neck.  To  add  solemnity 
to  the  scene,  a  Bombay  trumpeter  who  was  going  to  join  the 
embassy  was  directed  to  blow  a  blast  as  we  moved  off  the 
ground ;  but  whether  it  was  that  the  trumpeter  was  not  an 
adept  in  the  science  or  that  his  instrument  was  out  of  order, 
the  crazy  sounds  that  saluted  our  ears  had  a  ludicrous  effect. 
At  last,  after  some  jostling,  mutual  recriminations  and 
recalcitrating  of  the  steeds,  we  each  found  our  places  and 
moved  out  of  the  gate  of  the  city  in  good  order.  The  resi- 
dents accompanied  us  a  little  way,  and  then  left  us  to  pursue 
our  journey  over  the  plain.  It  was  a  fine  moonlight  night, 
the  scene  new  and  perfectly  oriental,  and  nothing  prevented 
me  from  indulging  my  own  reflections.  As  the  night 
advanced  the  califa  grew  quiet;  on  a  sudden  one  of  the  mule- 
teers began  to  sing,  and  sang  in  a  voice  so  plaintive  that  it 
was  impossible  not  to  have  one's  attention  arrested.  Every 
voice  was  hushed. 

"  These  were  the  words  translated : 

Think  not  that  e'er  my  heart  could  dwell 

Contented  far  from  thee, 
How  can  the  fresh-caught  nightingale 

Enjoy  tranquility? 


LIFE   OF    HENRY    MARTYN.  33 

Oh,  then  forsake  thy  friend  for  naught 

That  slanderous  tongues  can  say, 
The  heart  that  fixeth  where  it  ought 

No  power  can  rend  away. 

"  Thus  far  our  journey  was  agreeable.  Now  for  miseries. 
At  sunrise  we  came  to  our  ground  at  Ahmedu,  six  parasangs, 
and  pitched  our  little  tent  under  a  tree  ;  it  was  the  only  shel- 
ter we  could  get.  At  first  the  heat  was  not  greater  than  we 
had  felt  in  India,  but  it  soon  became  so  intense  as  to  be  quite 
alarming.  When  the  thermometer  was  above  112°,  fever 
heat,  I  began  to  lose  my  strength  fast ;  at  last  it  became 
quite  intolerable.  I  wrapped  myself  up  in  a  blanket  and  all 
the  warm  covering  I  could  get  to  defend  myself  from  the 
external  air,  by  which  means  the  moisture  was  kept  a  little 
longer  upon  the  body,  and  not  so  speedily  evaporated  as 
when  the  skin  was  exposed.  One  of  my  companions  followed 
my  example  and  found  the  benefit  of  it.  But  the  thermom- 
eter still  rising,  and  the  moisture  of  the  body  being  quite 
exhausted,  I  grew  restless  and  thought  I  should  have  lost  my 
senses.  The  thermometer  at  last  stood  at  126°.  In  this 
state  I  composed  myself  and  concluded  that,  though  I  might 
hold  out  but  a  day  or  two,  death  was  inevitable.  Captain 

-  continued  to  tell  the  hour  and  heights  of  the  ther- 
mometer, and  with  pleasure  we  heard  of  it  sinking  to  120°, 
118°,  etc.  At  last  the  fierce  sun  retired  and  I  crept  out  more 
dead  than  alive.  The  next  day  we  secured  some  comfort 
from  a  large  wet  towel  wrapped  about  the  head  and  body. 
At  sunset,  rising  to  go  out,  a  scorpion  fell  upon  my  clothes. 
The  night  before  we  found  a  black  scorpion  in  our  tent,  that 
made  us  uneasy,  so  we  got  no  sleep." 

June  9  Mr.  Martyn  arrived  at  Shiraz,  the  celebrated  seat 
of  Persian  literature,  and  at  once  began  work  upon  his  trans- 
3 


34  LIFE   OF   HENRY   MAETYN. 

lation  with  the  efficient  help  of  Mirza  Seid  All  Khan.  In 
this  work  he  had  many  interruptions,  being  himself  an  object 
of  attention  and  curiosity.  He  received  many  calls,  and 
unwilling  to  lose  any  opportunity  of  benefiting  the  inhab- 
itants of  Shiraz,  was  never  inaccessible  to  them.  He  says, 
June  17,  in  the  evening,  Seid  Ali  came  with  two  Moollahs, 
and  with  them  I  had  a  very  long  and  temperate  discussion. 
One  of  them  read  the  beginning  of  John  in  Arabic  and 
inquired  very  particularly  into  our  opinions  respecting  the 
person  of  Christ,  and  when  he  was  informed  that  we  did  not 
consider  His  human  nature  eternal  nor  His  mother  divine, 
seemed  quite  satisfied,  and  remarked  to  the  others,  'how 
much  misapprehension  is  removed  when  people  come  to  an 
explanation.' " 

"June  22.  The  Prince's  secretary  called  to  talk  about 
Soofeeism.  They  believe  they  know  not  what.  He  thought 
to  excite  my  wonder  by  telling  me  that  I  and  every  created 
being  was  God. 

"  June  26.  Two  young  men  from  the  college  came,  full  of 
zeal  and  logic,  to  try  me  with  hard  questions  such  as, 
whether  being  be  but  one  or  two?  What  is  the  state  and 
form  of  disembodied  spirits  ?  and  other  foolish  and  unlearned 
questions  ministering  strife.  At  last,  one  of  them  discovered 
the  true  cause  of  his  coming  by  asking  me  bluntly  to  bring 
a  proof  of  the  religion  of  Christ.  You  allow  the  divine  mis- 
sion of  Christ,  said  I,  why  need  I  prove  it  ?  Not  being  able 
to  draw  me  into  an  argument  they  said  what  they  wished 
to  say,  namely,  that  I  had  no  other  proof  for  the  miracles 
of  Christ  than  they  had  for  those  of  Mohammed,  which  is 
tradition.  '  Softly'  I  said,  'You  will  be  pleased  to  observe  a 
difference  between  your  books  and  ours,  when  by  tradition 
we  have  reached  our  several  books,  our  narrators  were  eye 
witnesses ;  yours  are  not,  nor  nearly  so.' 


LIFE    OF   HENRY   MARTYN.  35 

"  In  the  evening  Seid  All  asked  me  the  cause  of  evil.  I 
said  I  knew  nothing  about  it.  He  thought  he  could  tell 
me,  so  I  let  him  reason  on  till  he  soon  found  he  knew  as  lit- 
tle about  the  matter  as  myself.  He  wanted  to  prove  that 
there  was  no  real  difference  between  good  and  evil ;  that  it 
was  only  apparent.  I  observed  that  the  difference,  if  only 
apparent,  was  the  cause  of  a  great  deal  of  misery. 

"  June  30,  Sunday.  '  Preached  to  the  Ambassador's  suite 
on  the  "  Faithful  Saying."  In  the  evening  baptized  his  child. 
Zachariah  told  me  this  morning  that  I  was  the  town  talk.' 
Indeed  Shiraz  was  stirred  to  its  depth  by  the  presence  of 
Mr.  Martyn  during  the  whole  year  of  his  stay.  Men  of  every 
kind,  especially  the  learned  and  zealous,  came  singly  and  in 
groups  almost  every  day  to  argue  and  dispute  against  Christ. 
Now  it  was  a  party  of  Armenians,  now  learned  Jews,  now  a 
prince,  now  a  general,  now  the  very  Moojtuhid  himself,  the 
professor  of  Mohammedan  law.  This  great  dignitary  in- 
vited Mr.  Martyn  to  his  house,  where  for  hours  he  talked  on 
and  on,  defending  his  Prophet  and  showing  his  learning ;  he 
Avas  greatly  annoyed  at  any  difference  of  opinion,  and 
decided  it] was  "  quite  useless  for  Mohammedans  and  Chris- 
tians to  argue  together,  as  they  had  different  languages  and 
different  histories."  But  fearing  Mr.  Martyn's  influence  he 
was  stirred  to  write  a  defense- of  his  faith,  which  was  said 
to  surpass  all  former  treatises  on  Islam.  He  concludes  it  in 
these  words,  addressed  to  Mr.  Martyn :  "  Oh,  thou  that  art 
wise!  consider  with  the  eye  of  justice,  since  thou  hast  no 
excuse  to  offer  to  God.  Thou  hast  wished  to  see  the  truth 
of  miracles.  "We  desire  you  to  look  at  the  great  Koran : 
that  is  an  everlasting  miracle."  Mr.  Martyn  replied,  show- 
ing why  men  are  bound  to  reject  Mohammedanism ;  that 
Mohammed  was  foretold  by  no  prophet,  worked  no  miracles, 


36  UFE   OF    HENRY   MARTYN. 

spread  his  religion  by  means  merely  human,  appeals  to  man's 
Jo \vest  and  sensual  nature,  that  he  was  ambitious  for  himself 
and  family,  that  the  Koran  is  full  of  absurdities  and  contra- 
dictions, that  it  contains  a  method  of  salvation  wholly  ineffi- 
cacious, sadly  contrasting  with  the  divine  atonement  of  Jesus 
Christ.  The  Prince's  nephew,  hearing  of  the  attack  on 
Mohammed,  said,  "  the  proper  answer  to  it  is  the  sword." 

Mr.  Martyn  writes,  February  8 :  "  This  is  my  birthday,  on 
which  I  complete  my  thirty-first  }7ear.  The  Persian  New 
Testament  has  been  begun  and  finished  in  it.  Such  a  painful 
year  I  never  passed,  owing  to  the  privations  I  have  been 
called  to,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  spectacle  before  me  of 
human  depravity  on  the  other.  But  I  hope  I  have  not  come 
to  this  seat  of  Satan  in  vain.  The  Word  of  God  has  found  its 
way  into  Persia,  and  it  is  not  in  Satan's  power  to  oppose  its 
progress  if  the  Lord  hath  sent  it." 

The  Psalms  in  Persian  was  finished  by  the  middle  of 
March. 

On  the  23d  Mr.  Martyn  writes :  "  I  called  on  the  Vizier. 
In  the  court  where  he  received  me,  Mirza  Ibraheem  was  lec- 
turing. Finding  myself  so  near  my  old  and  respectable 
antagonist,  I  expressed  a  wish  to  see  him,  on  which  Jaffier 
Ali  Khan  went  up  to  ascertain  if  my  visit  would  be  agreeable. 
The  master  consented,  but  some  of  the  disciples  demurred. 
At  last,  one  of  them,  observing  that  by  the  blessing  of  God 
on  the  master's  conversation  I  might  possibly  be  converted, 
it  was  agreed  that  I  should  be  invited  to  ascend.  Then  it 
became  a  question  where  I  ought  to  sit.  Below  all  would 
not  be  respectful  to  a  stranger,  but  above  all  the  Moollahs 
could  not  be  tolerated.  I  entered  and  was  surprised  at  the 
numbers.  The  room  was  lined  with  Moollahs  on  both  sides 
and  at  the  top.  I  was  about  to  sit  down  on  the  floor  but 


LIFE   OF   HEJStBY   MAETYN.  37 

was  beckoned  to  an  empty  place  near  the  top,  opposite  to  the 
master,  who,  after  the  usual  compliments,  without  further 
ceremony,  asked  me,  '  What  we  meant  by  calling  Christ, 
God  \ '  War  being  thus  unequivocally  declared,  I  had  nothing 
to  do  but  stand  upon  the  defensive.  Mirza  Ibraheera  argued 
temperately  enough;  but  of  the  rest,  some  were  very  violent 
and  clamorous.  The  former  asked  '  if  Christ  had  ever  called 
himself  God — was  he  the  Creator  or  a  creature  ? '  I  replied, 
'  The  Creator.'  The  Moollahs  looked  at  one  another.  Such 
a  confession  had  never  before  been  heard  among  the  Moham- 
medan doctors. 

"  One  Moollah  wanted  to  controvert  some  of  my  illustra- 
tions by  interrogating  me  about  the  personality  of  Christ. 
To  all  his  questions  I  replied  by  requesting  the  same  informa- 
tion respecting  his  own  person.  To  another,  who  was  rather 
contemptuous  and  violent,  I  said  '  If  you  do  not  approve  of 
our  doctrine,  will  you  be  so  good  as  to  say  what  God  is, 
according  to  you,  that  I  may  worship  a  proper  object  ? '  One 
said, c  the  author  of  the  universe.'  '  I  can  form  no  idea  from 
these  words,'  said  I,  'but  of  a  workman  at  -work  upon  a  vast 
number  of  materials.  Is  that  a  correct  notion  ? '  Another  said, 
'  One  who  came  of  himself  into  being.'  '  So  then  he  came,'  I 
replied,  '  out  of  one  place  into  another,  and  before  he  came 
he  was  not.  Is  this  an  abstract  and  refined  notion  ? '  After  this 
no  one  asked  me  any  more  questions,  and  for  fear  the  dispute 
should  be  renewed  Jaffier  Ali  Khan  carried  me  away." 

When  we  think  of  the  bigotry  and  intolerence  of  these 
people  and  of  Mr.  Martyn's  unflinching  courage  single-handed 
and  alone,  declaring  the  truth  and  preaching  Christ,  exposed 
to  the  greatest  personal  danger,  contempt  and  insult,  but 
unabashed,  he  stands  before  the  world  during  his  Shiraz  resi- 
dence as  one  of  the  bravest  and  grandest  heroes  that  has  ever 


38  LIFE    OF    HENRY   MARTYN. 

lived.  Such  a  spectacle  is  thrilling  and  sublime.  God  was 
with  him  to  protect  him  and  to  inspire  his  magnificent  con- 
fessions. A  figure-head  in  history !  A  sight  for  angels  and 
for  men ! 

Faithful  found 

Among  the  faithless,  faithful  only  he, 
Unshaken,  unseduced,  unterrified, 
His  loyalty  he  kept,  his  zeal,  his  love. 

And  God  was  with  him  to  cheer  and  comfort,  and  \ve 
rejoice  to  know  that  some  of  the  scenes  of  his  life  in  Shiraz 
were  quiet  and  restful.  At  one  time  a  tent  was  pitched  for  him 
in  a  garden  in  the  suburbs  of  the  city. 

Living  amidst  clusters  of  grapes  by  the  side  of  a  clear 
stream  and  frequently  sitting  under  the  shade  of  an  orange 
tree,  which  Jaffier  Ali  Khan  delighted  to  point  out  to  visitors, 
until  the  day  of  his  own  departure,  he  passed  many  a  tran- 
quil hour,  and  enjoyed  many  a  Sabbath  of  holy  rest  and 
divine  refreshment. 

He  says :  "  Passed  some  days  at  Jaffier  Ali  Khan's  garden 
with  Mirza  Seid  Ali,  Aga  Baba,  Sheikh  Abul  Hassam,  read- 
ing at  their  request  the  Old  Testament  histories.  Their 
attention  to  the  word  and  their  love  and  respect  for  me 
seemed  to  increase  as  the  time  for  my  departure  approached. 
Aga  Baba,  who  had  been  reading  St.  Matthew,  related  very 
circumstantially  to  the  company  the  particulars  of  the  death 
of  Christ.  The  bed  of  roses  on  which  we  sat  and  the  notes 
of  the  nightingales  warbling  around  us,  were  not  so  sweet  to 
me  as  this  discourse  from  the  Persian." 

The  plain  of  Shiraz  is  covered  with  ancient  ruins,  and 
contains  the  tombs  of  the  poets  Zaadi  and  Hafiz. 

A  vision  of  the  bright  Shiraz,  of  Persian  bards  the  theme; 
The  vine  with  bunches  laden  hangs  o'er  the  crystal  stream; 
The  nightingale  all  day  her  notes  in  rosy  thicket  trills, 
And  the  brooding  heat-mist  faintly  lies  along  the  distant  hills. 


LIFE   OF   HENRY   MARTYN.  39 

About  the  plain  are  scattered  wide  in  many  a  crumbling  heap, 
The  fanes  of  other  days,  and  tombs  where  Iran's  poets  sleep; 
And  in  the  midst,  like  burnished  gems,  in  noonday  light  repose 
The  minarets  of  bright  Shiraz, — the  City  of  the  Rose. 

One  group  beside  the  river  bank  in  rapt  discourse  are  seen, 
Where  hangs  the  golden  orange  on  its  boughs  of  purest  green; 
Their  words  are  sweet  and  low,  and  their  looks  are  lit  with  joy, 
Some  holy  blessing  seems  to  rest  on  them  and  their  employ. 

The  pale-faced  Frank  among  them  sits;  what  brought  him  from  afar? 
Nor  bears  he  bales  of  merchandise,  nor  teaches  skill  in  war; 
One  pearl  alone  he  brings  with  him — the  Book  of  life  and  death, — 
One  warfare  only  teaches  he, — to  fight  the  fight  of  faith. 

And  Iran's  sons  are  round  him,  and  one  with  solemn  tone 

Tells  how  the  Lord  of  Glory  was  rejected  by  his  own; 

Tells  from  the  wondrous  gospel  of  the  trial  and  the  doom, — 

The  words  divine  of  love  and  might, — the  scourge,  the  cross,  the  tomb 

Far  sweeter  to  the  stranger's  ear  these  eastern  accents  sound, 
Than  music  of  the  nightingale  that  fills  the  air  around; 
Lovelier  than  balmiest  odors  sent  from  gardens  of  the  rose, 
The  fragrance  from  the  contrite  soul  and  chastened  lip  that  flows. 

The  nightingales  have  ceased  to  sing,  the  roses'  leaves  are  shed, 
The  Frank's  pale  face  in  Tocat's  field  hath  mouldered  with  the  dead; 
Alone  and  all  unfriended  midst  his  Master's  work  he  fell, 
With  none  to  bathe  his  fevered  brow,  with  none  his  tale  to  tell. 

But  still  those  sweet  and  solemn  tones  about  him  sound  in  bliss, 
And  fragrance  from  those  flowers  of  God  forever  more  is  his; 
For  his  the  meed,  by  grace,  of  those  who  rich  in  zeal  and  love, 
Turn  many  unto  righteousness,  and  shine,  as  stars  above. 

1851.  — HENRY  ALFOKD. 

On  the  24th  of  May,  after  a  year's  residence,  Mr.  Martyn 
left  Shiraz,  bearing  his  precious  translation  to  be  presented 
to  the  Shah.  The  journey  was  an  occasion  of  disappoint- 
ment, exposure  and  suffering. 

Arrived  at  the  Shah's  camp  he  says:  "June  12th, 
attended  the  Yizier's  levee,  when  there  was  a  most  intemper- 


40  LIFE   OF    HENRY   MARTYtf. 

ate  and  clamorous  controversy  kept  tip  for  an  hour  or  two, 
eight  or  ten  on  one  side,  and  I  on  the  other.  Amongst  them 
were  two  Moollahs,  the  most  ignorant  of  any  I  have  met  in 
Persia  or  India.  It  would  be  impossible  to  enumerate  all 
the  absurd  things  they  said.  Their  vulgarity  in  interrupt- 
ing me  in  the  middle  of  a  speech,  their  utter  ignorance  of 
the  nature  of  an  argument,  their  impudent  assertions  about 
the  law  and  the  gospel,  neither  of  which  they  had  ever  seen 
in  their  lives,  moved  my  indignation.  The  Vizier  said, '  You 
had  better  say,  God  is  God  and  Mohammed  is  the  prophet  of 
God.'  I  said,  '  God  is  God,'  but  •  added,?instead  of '  Moham- 
med is  the  prophet  of  God,'  '  Jesus  is  the  Son  of  God.'  They 
had  no  sooner  heard  this,  which  I  had  avoided  bringing  for- 
ward till  then,  than  they  all  exclaimed  in  contempt  and 
anger,  '  He  is  neither  born  nor  begets,'  and  rose  up  as  if  they 
would  have  torn  me  in  pieces.  One  of  them  said,  'What 
will  you  say  when  your  tongue  is  burnt  out  for  this  blas- 
phemy?' 

My  book  which  I  had  brought,  expecting  to  present  it  to 
the  king,  lay  before  Mirza  Shufi.  As  they  all  rose  up  after 
him  to  go,  some  to  the  king,  and  some  away,  I  was  afraid 
they  would  trample  upon  the  book ;  so  I  went  in  among  them 
to  take  it  up,  and  wrapped  it  in  a  towel  before  them,  while 
they  looked  at  it  and  me  with  supreme  contempt.  Thus  I 
walked  away  alone  to  my  tent  to  pass  the  rest  of  the  day  in 
heat  and  dirt.  What  have  I  done,  thought  I,  to  merit  all  this 
scorn?  Nothing,  I  trust,  but  bearing  testimony  to  Jesus.  I 
thought  over  these  things  in  prayer  and  found  the  peace 
which  Christ  hath  promised.  To  complete  the  trials  of  the 
day  a  messenger  came  from  the  Vizier  in  the  evening  to  say 
that  it  was  the  custom  of  the  king  not  to  see  any.  English- 
man unless  presented  by  the  ambassador  or  accredited  by  a 


LIFE    OF   HENRY    MARTYN.  41 

letter  from  him,  and  that  I  must  therefore  wait  till  the  king 
reached  Sultania,  where  the  ambassador  would  be. 

Traveling  toward  Tabriz  he  writes,  June  22 :  "  Met  with 
the  usual  insulting  treatment  at  the  caravansarai  when  the 
king's  servant  had  got  possession  of  a  good  room  built  for  the 
reception  of  the  better  order  of  guests;  they  seemed  to 
delight  in  the  opportunity  of  humbling  a  European  —  all 
along  the  road  when  the  king  is  expected  the  people  are 
patiently  waiting  as  for  some  dreadful  disaster ;  plague,  pes- 
tilence or  famine  are  nothing  to  the  misery  of  being  subject 
to  the  violence  and  extortion  of  this  rabble  soldiery. 

"  June  26.  Have  eaten  nothing  now  for  two  days.  My 
mind  much  disordered  from  headache  and  giddiness ;  —  but 
my  heart  is  with  Christ  and  His  saints. 

'k  June  27.  Passed  the  third  day  in  the  same  exhausted 
state,  my  head  tortured  with  shocking  pains,  such  as,  together 
with  the  horror  I  felt  at  being  exposed  to  the  sun,  showed 
me  plainly  to  what  to  ascribe  my  sickness." 

Thus  in  great  illness  and  suffering  Mr.  Martyn  reached 
Tabriz,  and  was  nursed  through  a  fever  of  two  month's  con- 
tinuance at  the  ambassador's  residence.  This  defeated  his 
plan  of  presenting  the  Persian  New  Testament  to  the  king — 
but  it  was  afterwards  done  by  Sir  Gore  Ouseley  himself,  and 
publicly  received  the  royal  approbation,  and  still  later  was 
printed  in  St.  Petersburg. 

On  leaving  Cawnpore,  Mr.  Martyn  had  intended  return- 
ing to  England,  but  had  willingly  remained  in  Persia  to  fin- 
ish the  translation,  which  being  now  disposed  of,  he  reverted 
to  his  original  intention,  and  set  out  on  his  last  fatal  journey 
towards  Constantinople,  September  2.  His  journal  is  filled 
with  expressions  of  gratitude  for  restored  health,  delight  in 
the  scenery  of  Tabriz,  descriptions  of  the  country  and  the 


42  LIFE   OF    HENRY    MARTYN. 

journey,  the  Araxes  river,  the  hoary  peaks  of  Ararat,  the 
governor's  palace,  the  ancient  Armenian  church  and  monas- 
tery at  Ech-Miazin,  where  he  received  great  kindness  from 
the  Patriarch  and  the  monks.  He  was  profoundly  impressed 
with  the  view  from  an  elevated  table-land  looking  out  upon 
Persia,  Eussia  and  Turkey — a  Pisgah  vision,  which  excites 
in  later  missionaries  a  strong  desire  for  Christian  conquest. 
Describes  Cars  and  Erzroom.  September  29,  left  Erzroom. 
Was  attacked  with  fever  and  ague. 

"  September  30.  Took  nothing  all  day  but  tea ;  head- 
ache and  loss  of  appetite  depressed  my  spirits,  yet  my  soul 
rests  in  Him  who  is  as  anchor  of  the  soul,  sure  and  steadfast, 
which,  not  seen,  keeps  me  fast. 

"  October  1.  Marched  over  a  mountainous  tract;  we  were 
out  from  seven  in  the  morning  till  eight  at  night.  After  sit- 
ting a  little  by  the  fire  I  was  near  fainting  from  sickness. 
My  depression  of  spirits  led  me  to  the  throne  of  grace  as  a 
sinful  abject  worm.  When  I  thought  of  myself  and  my 
transgressions,  I  could  find  no  text  so  cheering  as,  'My 
ways  are  not  as  your  ways.'  From  the  men  who  accompa- 
nied Sir  Wm.  Ouseley  to  Constantinople  I  learned  that  the 
plague  was  raging  at  Constantinople  and  thousands  dying 
every  day.  One  of  the  Persians  had  died  of  it.  They  added 
that  the  inhabitants  of  Tocat  were  flying  from  their  town 
from  the  same  cause  Thus  I  am  passing  into  imminent  dan- 
ger. O  Lord  thy  will  be  done !  Living  or  dying,  remember 
me. 

"  October  2.  Lodged  in  the  stables  of  the  post-house. 
As  soon  as  it  began  to  grow  a  little  cold,  the  ague  came  on 
and  then  the  fever,  after  which  I  had  a  sleep,  which  let  me 
know  too  plainly  the  disorder  of  my  frame.  In  the  night 
ITossan  sent  to  summon  me  away,  but  I  was  quite  unable  to 


LIFE   OF   HENKY   MAKTYN.  43 

move.  Finding  me  still  in  bed  at  the  dawn  he  began  to 
storm  furiously  at  my  detaining  him  so  long,  but  I  quietly 
let  him  spend  his  ire,  ate  my  breakfast  composedly,  and  set 
out  at  eight.  He  seemed  determined,  to  make  up  for  the 
delay,  for  we  flew  over  hill  and  dale  to  Sherean,  where  we 
changed  horses.  From  thence  we  traveled  all  the  rest  of  the 
day  and  all  night.  It  rained  most  of  the  time.  After  sun- 
set the  ague  came  on  again,  which  in  my  wet  state  was  very 
trying.  I  hardly  know  how  to  keep  my  life  in  me.  About 
that  time  there  was  a  village  at  hand,  but  Hassan  had  no 
mercy.  The  night  was  pitchy  dark,  so  that  I  could  not  see 
the  road  under  my  horse's  feet.  However,  God  being  mer- 
cifully pleased  to  alleviate  my  bodily  suffering,  I  went  on 
contentedly  to  the  munzil  (stopping-place).  After  sleeping 
three  or  four  hours  Hassan  hurried  me  away,  and  galloped 
furiously  toward  a  village,  which  he  said  was  four  hours  dis- 
distant,  which  was  all  I  could  undertake  in  my  present  state; 
but  village  after  village  did  he  pass,  till  night  coming  on, 
and  no  signs  of  another,  I  suspected  he  was  carrying  me  on 
to  the  munzil;  so  I  got  oif  my  horse  and  sat  upon  the  ground 
and  told  him  I  neither  could  nor  would  go  any  farther.  He 
stormed,  but  I  was  immovable,  till  a  light,  appearing  at  a  dis- 
tance, I  mounted  my  horse  and  made  toward  it,  leaving 
him  to  follow  or  not  as  he  pleased.  He  brought  in  the  party, 
but  would  not  exert  himself  to  get  a  place  for  me.  They 
brought  me  to  an  open  verandah,  but  Sergius  told  them  I 
wanted  a  place  in  which  to  be  alone.  This  seemed  very  offen- 
sive to  them,  '  and  why  must  he  be  alone '  ?  they  asked, 
ascribing  this  desire  of  mine  to  pride,  I  suppose.  Tempted 
at  last  by  money  they  brought  me  to  a  stable  room,  and 
Hassan  and  a  number  of  others  planted  themselves  there 
with  me.  My  fever  here  increased  to  a  violent  degree,  the 


44  LIFE   OP   HENRY   MARTVN. 

heat  in  my  eyes  and  forehead  was  so  great  that  the  fire 
almost  made  me  frantic.  I  entreated  that  it  might  be  put 
out  or  that  I  might  be  carried  out  of  doors.  Neither  was 
attended  to;  my  senvant,  who  from  my  sitting  in  that 
strange  way  on  the  ground,  believed  me  delirious,  was  deaf 
to  all  I  said.  At  last  I  pushed  my  head  in  among  the  lug- 
gage and  lodged  it  on  the  damp  ground  and  slept. 

"October  5.  Preserving  mercy  made  me  see  the  light  of 
another  morning.  The  sleep  had  refreshed  me  but  I  was 
feeble  and  shaken,  yet  the  merciless  Hassan  hurried  me  off. 
I  was  pretty  well  lodged  and  felt  tolerably  well  till  a  little 
after  sunset,  when  the  ague  came  on  with  a  violence  I  had 
never  before  experienced.  I  felt  as  if  in  a  palsy,  my  teeth 
chattering,  and  my  whole  frame  violently  shaken.  Aga 
Hosyn  and  another  Persian  on  their  way  here  from  Constan- 
tinople, came  hastily  to  render  me  assistance  if  they  could. 
These  Persians  appear  quite  brotherly  after  the  Turks. 
"While  they  pitied  me,  Hassan  sat  in  perfect  indifference, 
ruminating  on  the  further  delay  this  was  likely  to  occasion. 
The  cold  fit  after  continuing  two  or  three  hours  was  followed 
by  a  fever,  which  lasted  the  whole  night  and  prevented 
sleep. 

"  October  6.  No  horses  were  to  be  had,  and  I  had  an 
unexpected  repose.  Sat  in  the  orchard  and  thought  with 
sweet  comfort  and  peace  of  my  God :  in  solitude  my  compan- 
ion, friend  and  comforter.  Oh,  when  shall  time  give  place  to 
eternity — when  shall  appear  that  new  heaven  and  earth, 
wherein  dwelleth  righteousness  !  There,  there  shall  in  no 
wise  enter  in  anything  that  defileth ;  none  of  that  wickedness 
which  has  made  men  worse  than  wild  beasts,  none  of  those 
corruptions  which  add  still  more  to  the  miseries  of  humanity, 
shall  be  seen  or  heard  of  any  more." 


LIFE   OF   HENKY   MAKTYN.  45 

Here  abruptly  closes  the  journal,  with  pantings  for  the 
glory  and  the  purity  of  Immanuel's  land,  into  which  he 
was  admitted  by  a  blessed  translation,  released  from  all  the 
sufferings  of  life  on  October  16,  1812,  at  Tocat,  Turkey. 
The  manner  of  his  death  is  not  known,  whether  it  resulted 
from  the  sickness  described,  or  from  the  plague,  then  raging. 
Whether  Hassan  was  cruel  and  driving  to  the  last,  whether 
all  his  heartless  Turkish  attendants  deserted  him  or  not  in 
his  hour  of  final  agony,  we  cannot  tell.  No  relative  or 
friend  was  there,  no  tender  voice  of  sympathy,  no  woman's 
soothing  hand,  no  alleviations  from  medicine.  Even  the 
commonest  decencies  and  necessities  of  civilized  life  were 
lacking.  Earth  gave  nothing  to  Henry  Martyn  in  his  mortal 
need,  but  we  are  sure  heavenly  consolations  were  unstinted. 

"  Jesus  can  make  a  dying  bed 
Feel  soft  as  downy  pillows  are." 

And  Jesus  was  there!  And  Henry  Martyn  was  satisfied, 
and  is  forever  satisfied  !  "Precious  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord 
is  the  death  of  his  saints."  And  the  most  priceless  legacy  of 
the  blood -bought  and  commissioned  church  is  the  memory  of 
a  life,  so  gifted,  so  unselfish,  so  consecrated. 

It  is  wanting  in  no  element  of  moral  heroism.  Our  souls 
confess  its  grandeur.  The  contemplation  lifts  us  into  a 
higher  atmosphere  than  that  of  mammon,  and  self,  and  earth. 
We  rejoice  to  see  a  crown  so  rare,  so  fair,  so  precious,  laid  at 
the  feet  of  Jesus,  the  King.  He  is  worthy.  And  we  long  to 
see  the  youth  of  our  land  and  the  church  inspired  by  Henry 
Martyn's  example,  as  he  was  inspired  by  David  Brainerd's. 
And  so  we  would  have  the  apostolic  succession  continued  till 
the  millennium,  of  such  as  shall  not  count  their  lives  dear  for 
the  testimony  of  the  gospel. 

It  is  said  that  after  Mr.  Martyn's  death  one  of  his  earliest 


46  UKI-:    OK    HKXRY   MARTYN. 

ami  most  devoted  friends,  the  Rev.  Charles  Simeon,  used 
always  to  keep  his  picture  before  him  in  his  study  for  help 
and  inspiration.  "  Move  where  he  would  through  the  apart- 
ment, it  seemed  to  keep  its  eyes  upon  him,  and  ever  to  say  to 
him,  'Be. earnest,  be  earnest;  don't  trifle,  don't  trifle,'  and 
the  good  Simeon  would  gently  bow  to  the  speaking  picture, 
and  with  a  smile,  reply,  l  Yes,  I  will;  I  will  be  in  earnest,  1 
will  not  trifle ;  for  souls  are  perishing  and  Jesus  is  to  be 
glorified.'" 

Would  that  Henry  Martyn's  life  might  bring  such  a  mes- 
sage to  every  heart,  and  awaken  in  every  one  a  similar 
response. 


MISSIONARY  ANNALS. 


(A  SERIES.) 


A  STORY  OF 


ONE  SHORT  LIFE, 


1783  to  1818. 


ELISABETH  G.  STRYKEB. 


CHICAGO: 

WOMAN'S  PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OF  FOREIGN  MISSIONS  OF  THE  NORTHWEST, 
Room  48  McCormick  Block. 


COPYRIGHT,  1888, 

BY 

WOMAN'S  PRESBYTERIAN  BOARD  OF  MISSIONS 
OF  THE  NORTHWEST. 


CONTENTS. 


Pag-c. 

I.      ANCESTRY — BIRTH — BOYHOOD  —  CONVERSION.                                   -  53 

II.      COLLEGE — THE  HAYSTACK  —  EFFORTS  TO   SPREAD  THE  INTER- 
EST IN  FOREIGN  MISSIONS.           -          -  58 

III.      OBOOKIAH  IN  HAWAII  —  IN  AMERICA.                                                           -  C2 

IV.      THE  SANDWICH  ISLANDS  WITH,  AND  WITHOUT  THE  GOSPEL.     -  C3 

V.      MILLS  AT  ANDOVER  —  THE  AMERICAN  BOARD.     -          -                     -  G8 

VI.      AN  APOSTOLIC  JOURNEY  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES.      -  71 

VII.    MILLS'  SECOND  TOUR.  74 

VIII.      THE    AMERICAN    BIBLE    SOCIETY — THE   UNITED    FOREIGN    MIS- 
SIONARY SOCIETY.          -                                             77 

IX.      THE  AMERICAN  COLONIZATION  SOCIETY  —  MILLS,  AS  ITS  AGENT, 

VISITS  AFRICA. 81 

X.      THE  LAST  JOURNEY. 86 


As  I  write,  I  have  in  my  mind  a  row  of  intelligent  boyish 
faces.  Manly  souls  look  through  bright  eyes.  My  heart 
responds  to  the  beats  of  affection  beneath  jacket  and  cut-a- 
way. 

I  see  also  a  row  of  girlish  faces,  in  which  Christian  and 
womanly  graces  are  dawning.  I  feel  the  warmth  of  pure 
young  hearts  beginning  to  swell  with  generous  desires. 

These  are  my  real  friends.  Beyond  them  I  see  rows  and 
rows  of  boys  and  girls  whose  sympathies  and  interest  I 
would  gladly  claim. 


PKEFACE. 


Those  among  us  interested  in  the  young  people,  the  boys 
and  girls  of  our  Churches,  somewhat  realize  the  lack  of  ma- 
terial wherewith  to  stimulate  and  nourish  these  young  work- 
ers. The  apiarist  studies  the  nature  of  the  insect  which 
must  yield  him  its  sweets,  and  discovers  that  "  the  nature  of 
the  cell  and  the  food  affects  the  difference"  in  the  bees. 
We  have  long  watched  our  boys  and  girls,  and  either  we  do 
not  care  what  they  yield,  or  we  are  dull  not  to  notice  that 
what  surrounds  them  and  enters  into  their  minds,  is  surely 
deciding  their  natures.  White  clover  honey  can  only  be 
made  from  white  clover  blossoms.  What  they  read  and 
what  they  may  be  induced  to  read  concerns  us  as  mission 
workers.  Individual  tastes  make  many  by-paths  in  the 
field  of  literature,  but  the  girls  all  enjoy  the  windings  of 
romance,  and  the  boys  delight  in  the  highway  of  advent- 
ure. "  But,"  they  say  or  think,  "  Missions,  their  history 
and  progress  are  so  stupid,  they  have  no  decent  heroes  and 
heroines.  We  like  Kobinson  Crusoe,  and  Little  Women,  and 
the  Arabian  Nights ! "  But  do  we  not  know  that  the  stories 
of  the  lives  of  some  of  our  missionaries,  well  told,  may  stand 
side  by  side,  upon  the  book-shelves  and  in  the  hearts  of  our 
young  people,  with  the  pages  of  DeFoe  and  Louise  Alcott? 
Many  a  boy  and  girl,  charmed  by  the  life  and  fortune  of 
some  unreal,  and  oftentimes  unworthy,  hero,  has  attempted 
to  make  copy  in  his  or  her  own  life.  Missionary  lives  are 
not  lacking  in  the  spirit,  adventure  and  romance  which  are 
so  fascinating.  With  these  ideals  in  their  minds,  may  we 

51 


52  PREFACE. 

not  expect  followers  of  the  Judsons,  the  Moffats,  the  Fiskes 
and  the  Hankins  ? 

The  writer,  who  has  humbly  undertaken  to  re-tell  an  old 
tale,  is  neither  a  De  Foe  nor  an  Alcott.  She  finds  she  can 
borrow  neither  of  their  pens.  Her  own,  conscious  of  its  in- 
experience, finds  its  only  relief  in  the  fact  that  the  story  is 
its  own  strength. 


SAMUEL  J.  MILLS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

ANCESTRY  —  BIRTH  —  BOYHOOD  —  CONVERSION. 

OUR  country  is  quietly  enjoying  the  benefits  of  a  great 
activity.  Foreign  Missions  are  still  feeling  a  noble  im- 
pulse, and  the  origin  of  this  force  was,  under  God,  in  the 
heart  and  brain  of  Samuel  J.  Mills. 

It  is  a  name  known  to  us,  but  a  history  almost  forgotten. 
Only  upon  the  shelves  of  some  antiquarian,  or  in  the  undis- 
turbed library  of  some  old  homestead  can  a  volume  be  found 
bearing  the  title  "  Mills'  Memoirs."  Take  it  down,  blow  the 
dust  from  the  leaves  yellow  with  sixty-seven  years,  and  you 
will  find  the  narrative  related  in  the  stately,  old-time  style, 
and  somewhat  laudatory  and  expansive. 

He  had  no  son,  as  Adoniram  Judson  had,  gladly  to  record 
the  details  of  his  busy  life.  The  writer  was  Dr.  Gardiner 
Spring,  who  laments  having  failed  in  the  attempt  to  obtain 
what  appeared  to  him  to  be  important  information.  We  are 
thankful  to  him  for  gathering  even  these  rare  fragments. 

From  a  sketch  of  Salmon  Giddings,  the  Damon  Memo- 
rial, a  letter  from  a  relative  of  Mills,  and  the  life  of  Henry 
Obookiah  have  come  a  few  incidents  and  facts,  but  mainly  in 
the  record  of  Dr.  Spring  have  we  found  our  Story  of  One 
Short  Life.  Such  hid  treasure  should  find  the  light,  even 
though  quarried  by  unskillful  hands. 

Biographies  are  apt  to  seem  discouraging,  in  the  begin- 
ning; the  attention  being  riveted  upon  the  supposed  hero, 

53 


54:  ONE    SHORT    LIFE. 

meets  with  a  shock  in  finding  it  has  been  following  the 
history  of  his  great-grandfather.  The  scattered  energies  are 
then  directed  upon  the  grandfather,  only  to  meet  with  a 
second  delay.  Again  recovering,  and  following  the  father's 
fortunes,  the  son,  the  subject  of  the  work,  is  at  last  introduced. 

The  great-grandfather  of  our  hero  must  be  brought  in 
just  long  enough  to  answer  one  question.  He  was  once 
asked,  "  How  did  you  educate  four  sons  at  Yale  College, 
and  give  each  a  profession  ? "  His  reply  was,  "  Almighty 
God  did  it,  with  the  help  of  my  wife."  The  grandfather  (of 
our  hero)  was  drowned  while  some  of  his  children  were  still 
young.  His  widow,  committing  their  babes  to  the  God  of 
the  fatherless,  especially  offered  for  His  service,  a  son  named 
Samuel  John.  He  became  a  minister,  and  for  many  years 
was  settled  in  Torringford,  Connecticut.  He  was  eminent 
for  his  ability  and  character.  Mrs.  Stowesaid  of  him — "  He 
was  one  ingrain  New  Eiiglander.  Of  all  the  marvels  that 
astonished  my  childhood,  there  is  none  I  remember  to  this 
day  with  so  much  interest  as  Father  Mills."  This  was  the 
name  by  which  he  was  extensively  known.  His  wife  was  a 
woman  exemplary  and  devout. 

Being  assured  that  the  three  preceding  generations  were 
commandment-keeping,  we  shall  see  how  the  Lord  showed 
mercy  unto  the  fourth.  Almighty  God  and  a  true  mother 
secure  for  many  a  man's  sons,  not  only  education,  but  large 
efficiency  and  honor. 

The  seventh  child,  born  April  21st,  1783,  in  this  Torring- 
ford home,  was  a  son,  named  after  his  father,  Samuel  John. 
The  child  grew  to  be  a  mighty  instrument  in  God's  hand, 
which  He  in  His  wisdom  selected,  knowing  the  fineness  of  the 
material  with  which  he  dealt.  That  we  too  may  know  some- 
thing of  the  tempering  of  the  steel,  we  are  permitted  a  rever 


ONE    SHORT   LIFE.  55 

ent  glance  into  that  pious  mother's  bosom.  Before  the  birth- 
day came  she  continually  dedicated  the  little  life  beneath  her 
heart  to  the  God  who  is  pleased  to  accept  such  gifts.  During 
all  his  childhood  he  received  the  most  careful  Christian  train- 
ing. Nourished  in  such  a  home-garden,  and  shined  on  by 
such  mother-light,  we  cannot  wonder  that  the  child  grew 
toward  the  Sun,  and  that  the  roots  of  religious  character 
struck  deep  and  spread  wide. 

When  but  a  little  child  he  showed  an  unusual  concern  of 
conscience.  At  fifteen  the  town  in  which  he  lived  was  greatly 
aroused  and  revived.  His  friends  and  acquaintances  received 
the  blessing,  and  he  was  deeply  interested,  but  the  revival 
passed,  leaving  him  with  a  bitter,  rebellious  feeling  in  his 
heart. 

About  this  time,  one  fine  cold  winter  morning,  a  merry 
sleigh  load  drove  from  his  father's  house.  He,  with  his 
brothers,  sisters  and  cousins,  about  eighteen  in  all,  went  to 
spend  a  few  days  with  his  uncle  in  West  Hartford.  Sam- 
uel had  recently  come  into  the  possession  of  a  fine  farm, 
lie  was  gay  and  ambitious.  His  companions  fearing  his 
good  fortune  might  make  him  feel  a  "little  too  high  minded," 
sought  to  tease  him.  The  evening  before  their  return, 
after  eating  nuts  and  apples,  they  agreed  to  have  a  little 
singing.  They  struck  up  "  Hark,  from  the  Tombs  a  Doleful 
Sound,"  to  the  tune,  Bangor.  They  sang  it  slowly  and 
solemnly,  now  and  then  casting  at  him  glances  from  their 
mischievous  eyes.  He  sat  a  silent  listener,  while  their  song, 
sung  in  fun,  made  an  earnest  impression  of  which  he  could 
not  rid  himself. 

Soon  after  his  farm  was  sold,  and  at  eighteen  he  deter- 
mined to  go  to  Litchfield  and  study  in  the  Academy.  As  he 
was  leaving  home,  his  mother's  anxious  heart  could  not  let 


56  ONE   SHORT    LIFE. 

him  go  without  enquiring  for  his  soul's  health.  Other 
mothers  know  the  pain  she  suffered,  when  he  told  her  "  for 
two  years  I  have  been  sorry  God  ever  made  me."  She 
replied  to  him  as  her  wise  heart  prompted  her,  and  sent  him 
on  his  way.  She  went  where  all  mothers  of  boys  must  so 
often  go,  to  her  knees,  alone  with  God. 

He  had  not  gone  far  on  his  journey  when  he  met  a  Friend. 
It  was  the  Good  Shepherd,  whom  that  mother's  urgent 
prayer  had  sent  searching  for  the  wanderer.  It  was  as  if  ho 
had  met  Christ  in  his  path.  He  looked  up  at  the  great  trees 
and  down  at  the  blossoms,  and  in  everything  saw  God.  He 
became  so  impressed  with  the  perfections  of  the  Holy  One 
he  had  so  long  resisted,  that  he  lost  sight  of  himself.  He 
sat  down  in  the  woods  to  wonder  and  to  pray.  It  was  not 
until  some  time  after  that  he  realized  any  change  in  him- 
self, and  not  until  he  returned  from  Litchfield  did  his  father 
perceive  it.  His  conversion  was  thorough.  Not  only  was  he 
turned  about, — his  face  God- ward  instead  of  self -ward, — but 
he  was  impelled  toward  "  those  sitting  in  darkness."  In  his 
childhood,  from  his  mother's  lips,  he  often  heard  stories  from 
the  lives  of  Brainerd,  Eliot,  and  other  missionaries.  He  heard 
her  prayers  for  them  and  their  great  undertakings.  Once 
he  heard  her  say,  "  I  have  consecrated  this  child  to  the  ser- 
vice of  God  as  a  missionary."  Now  it  was  his  joy  to  follow 
those  noble  examples,  and  to  fulfill  his  part  in  the  plans  of  God 
and  his  mother  for  him.  His  parents  approved  of  his  deter- 
mination, though  the  thought  of  separation  tore  their  hearts. 
His  mother  said  to  him,  "  I  cannot  bear  to  part  from  you,  my 
son."  When  he  reminded  her  of  her  vow,  she  burst  into 
tears,  and  never  after  made  complaint.  To  his  father  he  said 
that  he  could  "  not  conceive  of  any  course  of  life  in  which  to 
pass  the  rest  of  his  days,  that  would  prove  so  pleasant,  as  to 


ONE   SHORT   LIFE.  57 

go  and  communicate  the  gospel  of  salvation  to  the  poor 
heathen." 

This  desire  to  spread  the  Gospel  grew  to  be  a  sublime  pur- 
pose, and  from  it  he  never  wavered.  He  set  about  his  plan- 
nings,  with  this  supreme  end  in  view.  Thanking  God  for  his 
own  'salvation,  he  laid  his  life  in  God's  hand,  imploring  Him 
to  use  it  for  those  who  had  as  yet  no  knowledge  of  that 
mercy.  The  Lord  took  him  from  the  plough,  as  he  did 
Elisha.  He  left  the  field  for  the  college. 


58  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 


CHAPTER   II. 

COLLEGE  —  THE  HAYSTACK — EFFORTS   TO    SPREAD  THE  INTEREST   IN  FOR- 
EIGN MISSIONS. 

HE  entered  Williams  College  in  the  spring  of  1806.  Dur- 
ing his  first  visit  home  in  June,  he  connected  himself 
with  his  father's  church.  A  college  course  means  to  some  young 
men  four  years  of  frolic,  or  worse.  To  others  it  is  an  oppor- 
tunity to  cram  knowledge,  that  shall  by-and-by  astound  the 
round  world  and  they  that  dwell  therein.  To  one,  at  least,it  was 
the  time  for  choosing  "  smooth  stones  "  for  his  combat  with  the 
giant  adversary,  whom  he  was  brave  enough  to  meet  alone,  if 
need  be,  "  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts." 

As  a  scholar  he  was  not  brilliant,  but  as  a  Christian  he 
was  "  a  bright  and  shining  light."  To  serve  God  was  the 
highest  aim  of  his  life.  First  of  all,  he  served  Him  upon  his 
knees.  He  used  to  pray  often  and  earnestly,  alone  and  with 
others.  He  pursued  his  studies  for  the  after  use  he  might 
make  of  them,  not  for  his  own  accomplishment.  As  he  visited 
his  friends  in  their  rooms,  and  walked  with  them  through  the 
groves,  the  subject  dearest  to  his  heart  was  oftenest  the 
theme  of  his  conversation.  To  one  friend  he  said:  "  Though 
you  and  I  are  very  little  beings,  we  must  not  rest  satisfied 
till  we  have  made  our  influence  extend  to  the  remotest  cor- 
ner of  this  ruined  world." 

His  life  was  so  consistent,  his  disposition  so  sweet,  his 
manners  so  winning  that  every  one  was  his  friend.  Those 
who  had  been  unfaithful  to  their  vows  were  reproved, 
and  those  opposed  to  religion  were  induced  to  follow  his 


ONE    SHORT   LIFE.  59 

example.  During  his  first  year  there  was  a  revival,  which 
seemed  to  come  in  answer  to  his  earnest  prayers.  Many  of 
his  comrades  became  Christians,  and  so  earnestly  that  they 
laid  aside  or  sanctified  their  old  ambitions,  and  prepared  to 
spread  through  the  earth  the  fire  kindled  by  this  devoted 
youth. 

A  mission  band  of  boys  were  examined  as  to  their  knowl- 
edge of  Samuel  Mills".  "  "Where  was  he  born  ?  "  asked  the 
leader.  "  Under  a  haystack !  "  replied  a  small  boy.  Had  the 
question  been,  Where  was  the  American  Board  of  Foreign 
Missions  born  ?  the  answer  would  not  have  been  so  far  from 
the  way.  Its  baptismal  naming  came  some  years  later,  but 
under  a  stack  of  hay  in  a  meadow,  near  Williams  College,  it 
was  born,  nursed  and  prayed  over. 

About  fourteen  years  earlier  foreign  missionary  organi- 
ization  had  begun  across  the  Atlantic.  On  this  side,  the  at- 
tention of  Christians  had  been  occupied  with  their  new  homes 
and  the  needs  of  the  destitute  near  at  hand.  There  were 
societies  of  domestic  missions  ;  but  no  scheme  to  touch  hands 
God-blessed  with,  hands  idol-cursed,  had  ever  been  devised 
before  the  Lord  of  both  put  it  into  the  heart  of  Mills.  "  God 
called  him  out  of  the  midst  of  the  bush."  The  bush  was 
this  haystack,  but  the  place  became  "  holy  ground."  The 
Lord  said:  "  I  have  surely  seen  the  affliction  of  my  people, 
and  have  heard  their  cry."  "  Come  now,  therefore,  and  I 
will  send  thee/' 

This  commission  filled  his  soul.  He  gathered  a  few  of  his 
friends  in  a  grove,  to  tell  them  his  convictions  and  his  hopes. 
What  was  his  surprise  and  joy  to  find  that  the  "  Angel  of  the 
Lord  "  had  appeared  to  them  also.  A  sudden  thunder  storm 
came  upon  them  here,  but  his  retreat,  his  place  of  safety, 
was  near  by.  He  led  them  under  the  haystack,  and  there 


CO  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 

they  talked  together,  and  with  God.  And  there  they  con- 
tinued to  meet  through  two  seasons,  and  finally  formed 
themselves  into  the  first  Foreign  Missionary  Society  of  this 
continent.  Its  object  was  "  to  effect  in  the  persons  of  its 
members  a  mission  to  the  heathen." 

From  the  spot  where  the  haystack  once  stood,  now  rises 
a  marble  shaft,  bearing  .aloft  a  globe,  underneath  which  is  in- 
scribed : 

"  THE  FIELD  is  THE  WORLD." 
"The  Birthplace  of  American  Foreign  Missions,  1806." 

SAMUEL  J.  MILLS, 

JAMES  RICHARDS, 

FRANCIS  L.  BOBBINS, 

HARVEY  LOOMIS, 

BYRAM  GREEN. 

At  every  commencement,  the  college  president  leads  to 
this  monument  a  procession  of  alumni,  students,  and  guests. 
Prayer  is  offered  that  the  spirit  of  missions  may  still  prevail 
at  Williams,  and  that  the  traditions  of  the  past  may  be 
maintained. 

In  these  years  public  opinion  was  decidedly  opposed  to 
the  enterprise  of  these  young  men.  Even  good  men  thought 
their  zeal  extravagant  and  expected  it  soon  to  subside.  In 
order  to  arouse  sympathy  and  a  right  sentiment,  they  de- 
vised various  means.  They  discussed  their  projects  with 
Christian  people.  The}7  distributed  missionary  sermons.  A 
list  was  made  of  the  names  of  distinguished  ministers,  to 
whom  these  young  men  made  frequent  visits,  urging  their 
suit.  Among  them,  the  first  to  take  fire,  was  Dr.  Worcester. 
With  one  of  them,  Dr.  Griffin,  Mills  asked  to  be  permitted 
to  study  theology.  Said  the  Doctor:  "  I  had  always  refused 


ONE   SHORT   LIFE.  61 

such  applications,  but  from  the  love  I  bore  to  him,  I  agreed 
to  criticise  one  sermon  a  week.  After  that  exercise  he  would 
commonly  sit  and  draw  letters  very  moderately  and  cauti- 
ously from  his  pocket,  reading  passages  to  me  on  some  be- 
nevolent project.  At  length  I  perceived  that  studying 
divinity  with  me  had  been  quite  a  secondary  object,  that  his 
chief  object  was  to  get  me  engaged  to  execute  his  plans.  As 
soon  as  I  discovered  that,  I  told  him  to  bring  out  his  letters 
and  all  his  plans,  without  reserve." 

Mills  became  convinced  that  they  could  not  expect  help 
from  the  Churches  unless  the  number  was  increased  of  young 
men  ready  to  devote  their  lives  to  this  cause.  He  and  his 
friends  then  separated  for  the  purpose  of  establishing  socie- 
ties in  other  colleges.  Mills  went  to  Yale,  hoping  there  to 
find  kindred  spirits.  This  was  not  the  case,  but  God  had 
sent  him  for  another  purpose,  and  that  to  know  Obookiah,  a 
heathen  boy  from  the  Sandwich  Islands.  This  acquaintance 
greatly  increased  his  zeal. 

Sometimes  a  little  seed,  wafted  by  the  wind,  is  borne  far 
from  its  mother  plant  to  take  root  in  a  foreign  soil :  but  its 
fruit  may  be  returned  whence  it  came.  This  little  lonely 
heathen  child,  blown  by  seemingly  cruel  and  adverse  winds, 
was  tossed  upon  our  Christian  shores  by  the  good  hand  of 
God.  The  ship  which  brought  him  touched  other  and  idol- 
atrous lands,  but  he  was  not  to  put  his  feet  down  till  they 
could  be  planted  in  the  right  place. 

That  his  life  touched  Mills'  life,  both  being  quickened,  is 
perhaps  reason  enough  forgiving  here  a  portion  of  Obookiah's 
history  and  that  of  his  native  land,  if  there  were  not 
another  reason,  and  that  the  opportunity,  here  afforded,  of 
following  a  stream  of  influence  to  its  sea. 


62  ONE   SHOKT   LIFE. 


CHAPTER  III. 

OBOOKIAn  IN  HAWAII, — IN  AMERICA. 

HENRY  OBOOKIAH  was  born  in  Hawaii,  about  the 
year  1Y92.  "When  about  twelve  years  old,  two  parties 
contending  for  dominion,  disturbed  the  peace  of  the  island. 
He  alone  survived  the  persecution  of  his  family.  He  was 
captured  and  carried  home  by  the  man  who  killed  his  parents, 
but  finally  made  his  way  to  an  uncle.  Though  he  was  well 
treated,  he  suffered  from  loneliness.  He  said  of  himself, 
"  "When  I  was  at  play  with  other  children,  after  we  had 
made  an  end  of  playing,  they  return  to  their  parents :  but  I 
was  returned  into  tears,  for  I  have  no  home,  neither  father 
nor  mother.  Poor  boy  am  I." 

He  determined  to  go  to  some  other  country,  and  forget 
his  sorrow.  The  captain  of  an  American  vessel  showed  him 
kindness,  and  consented  to  take  him  on  board.  He  brought 
him  to  America,  and  took  him  to  his  own  home  in  New 
Haven.  Henry  was  a  clumsy,  stupid-looking  boy  at  this 
time,  his  appearance  not  revealing  the  undeveloped  depths 
of  his  nature.  He  made  the  acquaintance  of  some  of  the 
students  at  Yale  College,  and  of  the  Rev.  E.  "W.  D  wight. 
These  friends  becoming  interested  in  his  welfare,  offered  to 
teach  him.  He  accepted  their  aid  with  avidity,  and  made 
wonderful  progress,  at  the  same  time  becoming  more  and 
more  lovable  and  attractive. 

A  fun-loving  disposition  soon  showed  itself.  Be  h;ul 
great  difficulty  in  pronouncing  the  letter  r,  giving  it  the 
sound  of  I.  Every  day  his  teacher  tried  to  help  him,  saying, 


ONE   SHORT    LIFE.  63 

"  try,  Obookiah,  it  is  very  easy"  This  seemed  to  amuse  the 
boy  greatly,  though  as  yet  he  could  not  express  himself 
in  English.  Some  time  after,  when  he  could  speak  more 
readily,  he  was  describing  to  his  teacher  some  of  the  cus- 
toms of  his  native  land.  Clasping  his  hands  together,  and 
adjusting  his  thumbs,  he  formed  a  cup  which  he  raised  to 
his  lips  to  show  how  his  countrymen  drank  from  a  spring. 
His  instructor  tried  to  do  the  same,  but  before  he  could 
reach  his  mouth  with  his  hands  the  cup  would  be  inverted 
so  that  the  contents,  had  there  been  any,  would  have  been 
spilled.  Obookiah  laughed  heartil"  and  said,  "  try,  Mr. 
D  wight,  it  is  very  easy  !  " 

One  day  he  mimicked  the  gait  of  some  of  his  friends  so 
cleverly,  that  there  was  no  mistaking  whom  he  intended  to 
personate.  His  teacher  then  mocked  his  own  awkward 
style,  when  he  exclaimed  several  times:  "me  walk  so?" 
Being  assured  that  it  was  true,  he  rolled  upon  the  floor  until 
his  mirth  exhausted  his  strength. 

After  being  instructed  about  the  true  God,  idol  worship 
seemed  to  him  ridiculous.  He  said,  "  Hawaii  gods !  They 
wood,  —  burn.  Me  go  home,  put  'em  in  a  fire,  burn  'em  up. 
They  no  see,  no  hear,  no  anything."  Then  added,  "We  make 
them.  Our  God,"  looking  up,  "  He  make  us." 

After  Mr.  Mills  arrived  in  New  Haven  he  became  a 
friend  of  Mr.  Dwight's,  and  being  often  in  his  room,  occa- 
sionally heard  this  boy  recite.  He  became  greatly  attached 
to  him,  and  began  to  cherish  a  plan  for  his  future.  He 
wanted  to  see  Obookiah  a  Christian,  educated,  and  then  a 
missionary  to  his  native  land. 

One  evening  Mr.  Mills  had  not  been  long  in  Mr.  Dwight's 
room,  when  Obookiah  came  in  with  a  very  gloomy  face. 
He  said  he  had  no  place  to  live ;  Mr. did'nt  want  him 


C4  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 

any  more,  and  Miss had  threatened  to  take  away  his 

new  clothes.  Mr.  Mills  told  him  he  would  take  him  to  his 
own  home,  and  that  he  had  clothes  enough  for  both.  This 
cheered  the  poor,  disconsolate  fellow,  who  soon  went  with 
Mr.  Mills  to  Torringford,  and  was  placed  under  the  "  care  of 
those  whose  benevolence  was  without  a  bond  or  check,  or  a 
limit  to  confine  it."  Here  he  spent  a  part  of  the  year  1810, 
and  was  treated  wisely  and  affectionately.  Mrs.  Mills 
taught  him  the  Catechism,  and  her  son  Jeremiah  assisted 
him  in  his  studies.  At  different  times,  and  frequently,  their 
house  was  his  home. 

He  became  gentle  and  refined  in  his  manner,  a  Bible-lov- 
ing, earnest,  prayerful  Christian.  His  friends  who  had  been 
so  careful  in  the  training  of  his  mind  and  heart,  had  not 
neglected  his  hands.  He  was  taught  much  that  was  useful 
and  practical,  particularly  in  farming.  He  surprised  all  by 
the  quickness  and  eagerness  with  which  he  learned.  He  was 
both  inquisitive  and  acquisitive  to  a  remarkable  degree.  He 
persisted  in  knowing  and  getting,  that  he  might  impart  what 
he  had  gained  to  his  own  countrymen.  To  return  to  them 
for  their  enlightenment,  was  his  consuming  desire. 

He  visited  many  families,  and  many  of  the  churches  of 
New  England,  always  creating  a  deep  interest  in  his  mission. 
Many  people  who  had  affirmed  that  the  heathen  could  never 
be  reclaimed  from  their  low  estate,  were  forced  to  change 
their  opinions  after  seeing  and  knowing  Obookiah,  and  were 
inspired  to  pray  and  give  for  his  and  other  unevangelized 
races. 

The  presence  of  Obookiah  in  this  country,  as  well  as  of 
other  heathen  youth,  together  with  the  desire  to  educate 
some  of  our  own  Indians,  led  to  the  formation  of  the  Foreign 
Mission  School,  at  Cornwall,  Mass.  This  school  was  under 


ONE    SHOIiT    LIFE.  65 

the  care  of  the  American  Board  ten  years.  Its  pupils  were 
from  many  different  nations.  In  1826  it  was  discontinued, 
for  by  this  time  the  missions  were  able  to  educate  the  young 
at  their  several  stations. 

Obookiah  was  pursuing  his  studies  here,  when,  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  year  1818,  he  was  stricken  with  typhus  fever, 
and  suffered  several  weeks.  On  the  17th  of  February,  1818, 
he  shook  hands  with  all  his  companions  present,  and  with 
perfect  composure  addressed  to  them  the  parting  salutation 
of  his  native  language,  "Alloaho  e"  —  "my  love  be  with 
you." 

Mrs.  Stone,  in  whose  house  he  died,  and  who  cared  for 
him  with  Christian  kindness  during  his  sickness,  said,  "  This 
had  been  one  of  the  happiest  and  most  profitable  periods  of 
her  life  ;  that  she  had  been  more  than  rewarded  for  her  cares 
and  watch  ings  by  day  and  night,  in  being  permitted  to  wit- 
ness his  excellent  example,  and  to  hear  his  godly  conversa- 
tion." 

Almost  immediately  after  his  death,  missionaries,  inspired 
by  his  life,  hastened  to  accomplish  his  cherished  purpose,  the 
establishment  of  a  mission  in  the  Sandwich  Islands.  Mills 
was  far  from  home,  but  returning  at  the  time,  not  knowing 
Obookiah  had  died,  he  said  to  a  friend,  "  If  it  please  God  that 
I  may  arrive  safely,  I  think  that  I  shall  take  Obookiah  and  go 
to  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  there  I  will  end  my  life." 

From  that  day  to  this,  missionaries  and  missions,  schools, 
churches  and  Christians  have  multiplied,  till  all  those  islands 
name  the  name  of  Christ. 


Co  ONE   SHOET   LIFE. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  SANDWICH  ISLES  WITH  AND  WITHOUT  THE  GOSPEL. 

"  Surely  the  isles  shall  wait  for  me." 

r~T!  HE  missionaries  found  upon  these  islands  naked  savages, 
I  without  books,  education,  or  courts  of  justice.  The  peo- 
ple were  slaves,  governed  arbitrarily  by  chiefs.  It  was  a  nation 
of  debauchees,  thieves  and  drunkards.  There  were  no  mar- 
riage laws.  Two-thirds  of  the  children  born  were  destroyed. 
If  an  infant  was  ailing  or  troublesome,  the  mother  scooped  a 
hole  in  the  ground,  covered  the  child  with  earth  and  tram- 
pled out  its  life.  The  aged  and  infirm  were  taken  to  the 
brow  of  a  precipice  and  pushed  over.  The  sick  were  removed 
to  such  a  distance  that  their  groans  could  not  annoy,  and  left 
to  die.  The  insane  were  stoned  to  death. 

God  opened  the  way  for  the  missionaries  by  a  revolution 
which  did  away  with  idolatry,  but  did  nothing  for  the  up- 
lifting of  society.  Some  of  the  noblest  specimens  of  our 
American  manhood  have  devoted  their  lives  to  these  deso- 
late, far-away  creatures.  The  mention  of  one  will  suffice  as 
a  sample  of  the  salt  that  purified  those  bitter  and  filthy 
waters. 

When  he  stepped  on  shore  at  Hilo,  in  1832,  it  was  to  stay 
till  his  work  was  finished — and  he  lived  beyond  the  three 
score  and  ten.  Such  a  life  is  a  rebuke  to  the  restlessness  of 
many  modern  Avorkers.  For  forty-two  years  he  labored  pa. 
tiently  in  pressing  himself  and  what  he  knew  upon  Hawaiian 
youth — nearly  a  thousand  in  all — many  of  whom  are  now 
pastors,  leading  lawyers,  men  of  affairs,  missionaries  to  Mi- 


ONE   SHOKT   LIFE.  67 

cronesia,  and  the  men  who  stand  for  righteousness  in  the 
native  churches.  Great  events  and  advances  in  science  were 
exciting  his  native  land,  but  he  worked  on,  struggling  for 
things  unseen  and  eternal.  Amid  uninspiring  surroundings, 
and  performing  many  menial  duties,  he  led  a  high  spiritual 
and  intellectual  life,  not  seeking  honor,  but  service — thereby 
gaining  honor,  and  the  "  rest  that  remaineth." 

As  for  the  results  of  such  consecration,  wisdom  and  work, 
the  facts  are  a  marvel  in  history.  Any  prophecy  in  regard 
to  them  would  have  been  thought  a  wild  dream.  These 
islanders  have  taken  their  place  among  the  Christian  nations. 
Marriage  is  considered  honorable,  the  family  established,  as 
well  as  schools,  churches  and  a  government,  whose  constitu- 
tion ordains  that  "  no  law  shall  be  enacted  at  variance  with 
the  word  of  the  Lord  Jehovah,  or  with  the  general  spirit  of 
His  word." 

In  proportion  to  the  population,  there  are  more  readers 
than  in  Boston.  The  proportion  of  true  Christians  is  as  great 
as  anywhere  in  Christendom.  They  are  decently  clad,  their 
homes  are  comfortable,  even  sometimes  going  so  far  as  to 
possess  a  melodeon  and  a  sewing-machine!  They  have  pro- 
gressed in  agriculture,  commerce,  the  industries,  literature 
and  the  arts.  It  is  a  regenerated  nation. 

The  American  Board  has  erased  this  mission  from  its 
list  and  transferred  all  responsibility  to  the  Hawaiian  Evan- 
gelical Association. 


68  ONE   SHORT    LIFE. 


CHAPTEE  V. 

MILLS  AT  ANDOVEU  —  THE  AMEBICAN  BOARD. 

FROM  Yale  College,  Mills  went  to  Andover  to  study 
theology.  Soon  after  entering,  his  dear  mother  died- 
His  grief  was  passionate.  He  mourned  for  the  loss  of  her 
face,  her  voice,  her  prayers,  but  not  as  one  "  without  hope." 

At  Andover  he  met  some  of  his  former  friends,  and 
found  new  ones  whose  hearts  the  Lord  had  stirred — Newell, 
Judson,  Nott,  Hall,  Mills !  Names  to  shout  at  the  sleeping 
saints  of  this  our  day !  Lives  to  uphold  to  the  view  of  our 
self-pleasing  generation !  These  men  organized  a  second 
missionary  society,  similar  to  the  one  at  Williams.  They 
met  to  pray  and  plan.  Their  prayers  were  answered  and 
their  plans  resulted  in  the  formation  of  the  American  Board 
of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions. 

If  the  objections  made  to  their  plans  were  here  rehearsed, 
the  arguments  would  sound  very  familiar;  they  are  the 
same,  in  spite  of  their  repeated  death-blows,  that  array  them- 
selves against  the  plan  of  missions  to-day.  The  assailants 
of  this  cause  are  not  students  of  history.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  opposition,  or  even  indifference,  to  Christian  mis- 
sions, unless  there  is  ignorance  behind  it. 

These  young  men  succeeded  in  gaining  the  sympathy 
and  alliance  of  some  of  the  prominent  pastors,  and  the  pro- 
fessors in  the  seminary.  To  the  annual  meeting  of  the  Gen- 
eral Association  of  Massachusetts,  at  Bradford,  June  27, 
1810,  they  presented  the  following  paper : 

The  undersigned,  members  of  the  Divinity  College,  respectfully  re- 


ONE    SHORT    LIFE.  69 

quest  the  attention  of-  their  Reverend  Fathers,  convened  in  the  General 
Association  at  Bradford,  to  the  following  statement  and  inquiries: 

They  beg  leave  to  state,  that  their  minds  have  been  long  impressed 
with  the  duty  and  importance  of  personally  attempting  a  mission  to  the 
heathen;  that  the  impressions  on  their  minds  have  induced  a  serious,  and 
they  trust  a  prayerful,  consideration  of  the  subject  in  its  various  attitudes, 
particularly  in  relation  to  the  probable  success  and  the  difficulties  attending 
such  an  attempt;  and  that  after  examining  all  the  information  which  they 
can  obtain,  they  consider  themselves  as  devoted  to  this  work  for  life,  when- 
ever God  in  his  providence  shall  open  the  way. 

They  now  offer  the  following  inquiries,  on  which  they  solicit  the 
opinion  and  advice  of  the  association.  Whether,  with  their  present  views 
and  feelings,  they  ought  to  renounce  the  object  of  missions,  as  visionary 
and  impracticable;  if  not,  whether  they  ought  to  direct  their  attention  to 
the  Eastern  or  Western  world?  Whether  they  may  expect  patronage  and 
support  from  a  missionary  society  in  this  country,  or  must  commit  them. 
selves  to  the  direction  of  a  European  society;  and  what  preparatory  meas- 
ures they  ought  to  take  previous  to  actual  engagement  ? 

The  undersigned,  feeling  their  youth  and  inexperience,  look  up  to 
their  fathers  in  the  church  and  respectfully  solicit  their  advice,  direc- 
tion and  prayers. 

ADONIKAM  JUDSON  JR. 

SAMUEL  NOTT  JR. 

SAMUEL  J.  MILLS. 

SAMUEL  NEWELL. 

The  names  of  Eice  and  Kichards  were  struck  off  "  for  fear    , , 
of  alarming  the  Association  with  too  large  a  number."  \ 

This  paper  was  referred  to  a  special  committee,  who 
indorsed  the  sentiment  and  submitted  a  plan  to  the  associa- 
tion, which  was  carried  into  effect  by  the  appointment  of  a 
Board  of  Commissioners  for  Foreign  Missions. 

After  much  exertion  and  inquiry  at  home,  Judson  was 
sent  to  England  to  learn  if  help  could  be  expected  from  the 
London  Missionary  Society.  He  found  that  society  willing 
to  take  the  young  men  under  its  care  and  support,  but  not 
ready  to  assist  the  new  Board. 

The  American  society  soon  received  aid  within  its  own 


70  ONE   SHORT  LIFE. 

boundaries,  which  was  a  far  better  beginning  than  to  be  de- 
pendent upon  outside  resources.  Mrs.  Mary  jSTorris,  the  wife 
of  one  of  the  founders  of  Andover  Seminary,  bequeathed  thirty 
thousand  dollars  to  the  Board.  God's  Spirit  generally  revived 
the  churches,  opening  the  eyes  and  hearts  of  His  people, 
their  purses  as  well,  though  not  many  of  the  latter  were 
well  filled  in  those  days. 

God  only  has  a  full  record  of  the  anxious  courage  and 
faith  which  was  exercised  by  the  supporters,  managers, 
and  appointees  of  the  Board  during  those  first  struggling 
years.  Under  the  care  of  this  board  Mills  and  his  friends 
placed  themselves,  and  by  it  most  of  them  were  sent  out  in 
the  year  1812. 


ONE   SHOKT   LIFE.  71 


CHAPTER  YL 

AN  APOSTOLIC  JOURNEY  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

FROM  the  first  throb  of  his  Christian  life,  the  heart  of 
Mills  beat  like  a  soldier's.  He  called  out  the  recruits, 
captained  the  forces,  and  died  in  service — a  hero !  In  his 
student  days  he  had  a  compelling  influence  upon  his  class- 
mates, and  even  then  showed  signs  of  generalship  in  his 
faculty  of  organizing.  The  establishment  of  the  Foreign 
Mission  School  was  largely  consequent  upon  his  suggestions ; 
in  the  formation  of  the  American  Board  he  was  one  of  the 
foremost  personal  instruments. 

Studies  finished,  his  heart  firm  in  his  lofty  purpose,  high- 
born schemes  began  their  struggling  claim  for  his  attention. 
The  world  with  all  its  lands  stretching  their  help-beckoning 
fingers,  was  persuading  him.  Over  the  home  land,  his  and 
ours,  he  turned  his  penetrating  glance.  He  saw  occasion 
for  vast  concern,  and  here  was  his  first  response.  To  go 
first,  opening  the  way  for  others  through  the  tangled  wil- 
derness, was  his  design,  his  master-plot.  That  "  divine  fer- 
ment "  at  Williams  College  worked  the  good  of  home,  as 
well  as  of  foreign,  missions. 

Having  chosen  a  companion-spy,  the  Rev.  John  Scher- 
merhorn,  soon  after  his  graduation  in  1812,  he  went  to  view 
a  goodly  land,  which  he  desired  to  have  the  people  of  God 
go  up  and  possess.  This  tour  was  undertaken  under  the 
patronage  of  the  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts  Home  Mis- 
sionary Societies.  Heretofore  these  societies  had  prayed 
and  wept  over  young  missionaries  sent  to  the  uncivilized 


72  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 

wilds  of  Western  New  York !  The  plan  of  Mills  and  Scher- 
merhorn  was  to  travel  through  the  wide  territory  lying 
between  the  great  lakes  and  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  to  learn  -the 
moral  condition  of  the  inhabitants,  and  scatter  what  good 
they  might. 

The  map  of  this  region,  as  published  in  Morse's  school 
atlas  of  1823,  is  curiously  different  from  the  maps  of  the 
present  day.  The  state  and  territorial  lines  have  been 
altered,  those  green,  pink,  and  yellow  blanks  have  become 
densely  freckled  and  wrinkled,  by  the  dots  of  cities  and 
towns,  and  by  the  complicated  tracery  of  railroads. 

These  travelers  did  not  telegraph  their  intended  arrival, 
nor  sleep  and  dine  their  way  to  their  journey's  end,  on  the 
"  Flyer,"  and  then  rest  in  some  palatial  hotel  at  last.  Each 
mounted  his  horse,  taking  with  them  by  way  of  baggage 
all  that  was  necessary  for  the  trip,  —  tent,  provisions,  cloth- 
ing and  Bibles.  They  plodded  through  miry  swamps,  they 
climbed  up  and  down  almost  perpendicular  ledges,  and  cut 
their  way  through  canebrakes  with  a  hatchet.  When  they 
had  creeks  to  cross  they  swam  their  horses.  At  night  they 
camped,  often  in  the  rain  and  sometimes  without  food. 
More  than  once  they  were  serenaded  by  Indian  war-whoops 
and  the  howling  wolves.  Stopping  at  town  or  settlement 
they  were  made  cordially  at  home  in  hut  and  cabin.  In 
some  places  they  perceived  bright  prospects,  the  germs  of 
future  cities,  and  were  often  urgently  besought  to  stay  and 
preach  the  gospel  permanently. 

They  found  everywhere  the  Sabbath  profaned,  only  a 
few  good  people  in  any  one  place,  and  Bibles  rare  posses- 
sions. In  some  places  the  people  were  longing  for  the  Gos- 
pel. In  all  the  leading  towns  they  formed  Bible  societies, 
and  everywhere  preached  and  distributed  Bibles,  which  were 
gladly  received. 


ONE  SHOKT  LIFE.  73 

From  Nashville  they  went  down  the  Cumberland  and 
Mississippi  with  General  Jackson  and  fifteen  hundred  volun- 
teers. In  New  Orleans  they  gained  the  consent  of  Bishop 
DeBury  to  distribute  the  Scriptures  in  French  to  the  French 
Romanists,  who  made  up  three-fourths  of  the  population  of 
the  state.  They  found  no  Protestant  church  in  the  city. 
They  here  organized  a  Bible  society,  and  remained  several 
weeks  to  preach  and  to  hold  prayer-meetings. 


74:  ONE  SHORT  LIFE. 


CHAPTEK  VII. 

MILLS'  SECOND  TOUB. 

IN  the  year  1814  Mr.  Mills  having  obtained  the  assistance 
of  some  of  the  eastern  Bible  societies,  and  having  cho- 
sen as  companion  the  Kev.  Daniel  Smith,  started  on  another 
tour  through  the  South  and  West.  They  went  laden  with 
Bibles  and  the  prayers  of  Christian  friends.  They  went 
through  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois  and  Missouri. 
In  all  these  states  they  found  the  people  "exceedingly  desti- 
tute of  religious  privileges,"  and  a  "lamentable  want  of 
Bibles  and  missionaries."  They  found  "  American  families 
who  never  saw  a  Bible,  or  heard  of  Jesus  Christ."  There 
was  only  one  minister  to  ten  thousand  people  if  equally 
placed  ;  but  there  were  districts  containing  from  twenty  to 
fifty  thousand  "  without  a  preacher."  These  men  were  light- 
bringers  to  this  "  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death,"  as  Mills 
called  it.  They  found  English  soldiers,  French  Romanists, 
colored  slaves,  our  own  dear  countrymen,  greedy  for  the 
bread  of  life. 

They  traveled  more  than  six  thousand  miles ;  they  passed 
through  a  variety  of  climates ;  they  endured  "  perils  in  the 
city,  perils  of  the  wilderness,  perils  on  the  rivers  and  on  the 
sea,"  that  they  might  cast  that  bread  upon  the  waters  which 
you  and  I  are  finding  after  many  days. 

Mills  arrived  for  the  second  time  in  New  Orleans,  soon 
after  the  celebrated  battle  of  January  8, 1815,  and  cheered 
many  hearts  by  his  coming.  lie  visited  the  soldiers  in 
prison,  the  sick  and  wounded  in  the  hospitals ;  kneeling  on 


ONE   SHOKT   LIFE.  75 

the  bare  floor  where  they  lay,  he  prayed  and  talked  with 
them,  sang  for  them,  and  gave  them  Bibles ;  he  preached  in 
camp.  The  Philadelphia  society  had  given  him  a  quantity 
of  French  Bibles.  The  people  were  clamorous  for  them. 
They  thronged  the  distributor's  door,  and  remained  even  after 
the  notice  had  been  given  that  no  more  could  be  had  until 
the  following  day.  They  came  sometimes  from  great 
distances.  In  one  week  a  thousand  copies  were  given  away. 
In  one  instance  a  Romish  priest  assisted  in  this  work.  The 
bishop  acknowledged  the  deplorable  state  of  the  people,  and 
preferred  their  having  the  Protestant  version  to  none  at  all. 

When  these  adventurers  in  Christ's  kingdom  visited  St. 
Louis,  they  found  it  a  place  of  two  thousand  inhabitants, — 
"  a  tumble-down  French  village,  —  built  mainly  of  wooden 
slabs  and  poles  set  vertically,  and  well  daubed  with  mortar 
mixed  with  straw,  though  there  were  many  log  houses." 
In  a  school-room  they  delivered  the  first  Presbyterian  or 
Congregational  sermons  ever  preached  on  the  west  side  of 
the  Mississippi.  They  were  gratefully  received,  and  had 
crowded  audiences.  The  people  would  gladly  have  supported 
either  one  could  he  have  stayed. 

But  the  immediate  duty  of  these  explorers  for  souls  was 
to  return  to  the  churches  which  had  sent  them  out,  to  report 
what  they  had  discovered,  and  to  beg  that  men  be  sent  to 
these  waste  places  which  were  waiting  to  be  made  to  blos- 
som. All  New  England  was  roused  to  effort  by  their  appeal, 
and  the  next  year  ten  or  twelve  men  responded  to  the 
summons. 

In  1848  the  word  "gold"  was  whispered  in  California 
and  heard  all  over  the  world.  The  gold-hunters  pressed  for- 
ward from  every  corner  of  the  earth.  It  was  not  thought 
a  hard  thing  to  turn  one's  back  on  home,  friends  and  country, 


Y6  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 

for  the  sake  of  gold,  though  that  glittering  promise  was,  to 
most  of  those  who  searched,  like  the  bag  at  the  end  of  the 
rainbow,  and  all  the  riches  of  this  world  "  make  themselves 
wings."  "The  promises  of  God  are  sure/'  and  the  riches 
which  He  bestows  are  everlasting  ;  and  yet  to  the  call,  gold 
and  glory,  young  men  answer  by  the  thousand,  while  to  the 
cry,  Christ  and  a  crown,  they  respond  by  the  dozen! 
"  Choose  ye  this  day  whom  ye  will  serve." 


ONE   SHORT   LIFE.  77 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  AMERICAN  BIBLE  SOCIETY — THE  UNITED  FOREIGN  MISSIONARY  SOCIETY. 

DUKING  these  two  missionary  journeys  the  heart  of  our 
apostle  was  swelling  with  the  woes  of  the  sin-bound, 
and  his  brain  contriving  for  their  release.  Upon  his  return  he 
settled  in  New  York  state,  and  spent  two  busy  years  in  work- 
ing out  his  purposes.  While  waiting  for  their  maturity  he  was 
m  jst  of  the  time  in  the  large  cities,  particularly  New  York. 
Here  he  spent  what  might  have  been  leisure,  in  visiting 
the  poor  in  the  neglected  districts.  He  also  wrote  many 
letters;  and  in  the  churches,  and  every  where,  and  upon  every- 
body, urged  attention  to  the  world's  great  needs,  and  their 
great  duties.  As  the  result  of  this  planning,  waiting  and 
working,  he  was  permitted  to  see  formed  the  American  Bible 
Society,  and  the  United  Foreign  Missionary  Society.  On 
the  subject  of  city  evangelization,  he  advanced  ideas  which 
we  at  this  striving  time  might  well  study. 

The  entire  destitution  of  religious  privileges  which  Mills 
had  witnessed  in  the  West  and  South,  and  the  great  desire  of 
the  people  for  the  word  of  God,  with  their  inability  to  supply 
themselves,  made  him  eager  for  the  formation  of  a  National 
Bible  Society,  which  should  be  large  enough  and  strong 
enough  to  supply  such  great  want.  He  had  some  hope  of 
having  the  matter  brought  out  at  the  general  assembly  of 
the  Presbyterian  church ;  but  it  was  thought  best  to  have  it 
come  about  through  the  existing  Bible  societies,  rather  than 
have  it  bear  the  features  of  any  denomination. 

The  matter  was  kept  constantly  before  influential  peo- 


78  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 

pie  by  this  indefatigable  man,  and  at  last  on  the  8th  of 
May,  1816,  delegates  from  the  different  Bible  societies  of 
the  United  States  convened  in  New  York  city,  and  resolved 
unanimously  "  to  establish,  without  delay,  a  General  Bible 
Institution,  for  the  circulation  of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  with- 
out note  or  comment."  Before  closing  their  sessions  a  con- 
stitution was  adopted,  managers  elected,  and  an  address 
issued  to  the  people  of  the  United  States,  informing  them  of 
the  project,  and  inviting  their  sympathy  and  cooperation  in 
this  benevolent  scheme. 

This  was  a  great  day  to  Mills,  and  those  who  saw  him, 
sitting  apart,  watching  with  intense  eagerness  the  delibera- 
tions of  the  convention,  long  remembered  his  delighted  face. 
But  how  must  the  resources  and  usefulness  of  this  society 
have  exceeded  even  his  fond  hopes ! 

As  its  first  depository,  it  shared  the  office  room  of  its 
agent.  From  time  to  time  it  was  forced  to  move  to  larger 
quarters,  until  the  year  1853,  when  it  located  permanently, 
in  its  well-known  building,  The  Bible  House,  on  Astor  Place, 
New  York  city.  This  edifice  is  of  brick,  six  stories  high, 
and  occupies  a  solid  block.  In  its  first  year,  the  society 
received  $37,779,  and  issued  6,410  volumes ;  in  its  seventieth 
year  (1886)  its  receipts  were  $523,910,  and  it  issued  1,437,440 
volumes.  In  the  Bible  House,  the  working  force — manu- 
facturing and  executive — numbers  about  250.  The  auxili- 
aries which  directly  and  indirectly  center  in  this  society, 
number  about  7,000. 

From  this  great  tree  and  its  many  branches,  the  leaves 
have  been  sent  for  the  healing  of  nations.  There  are  now  but 
few  countries  where  there  are  any  impediments  to  the  free 
circulation  of  the  Scriptures.  In  our  own  land  the  society 
has  afforded  relief  to  its  feeble  auxiliaries,  has  supplied  des 


ONE   SHOKT   LIFE.  79 

titute  Sabbath-schools,  has  endeavored  to  place  the  Bible  in 
the  common  schools,  to  distribute  it  among  soldiers  and  sea- 
men, to  furnish  hotels,  steamboats,  railroads,  and  humane 
and  criminal  institutions.  By  it,  the  Bible  has  been  circu- 
lated among  immigrants,  the  destitute  poor,  the  freedmen, 
the  Chinese,  and  (in  the  Douay  version)  among  Komanists. 
At  four  different  periods  the  society  has  made  exploration 
among  the  states  and  territories,  to  search  and  supply  the 
destitute.  Proportionately  the  number  of  families  without 
the  word  of  God  is  much  smaller  now  than  when  the  society 
was  organized,  notwithstanding  the  enormous  growths  in 
population. 

The  society  has  attempted  to  send  the  Bible  to  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  earth,  accessible  to  its  agents.  It  has 
established  depots  in  almost  every  place  where  the  American 
churches  have  missions.  It  circulates  the  Scriptures  in  more 
than  eighty  different  languages  and  dialects.  In  1856,  in 
compliance  with  a  special  request,  and  by  means  of  a  special 
gift,  the  Society's  Imperial  Quarto  English  Bible,  bound  with 
extraordinary  care,  enclosed  in  a  rosewood  case,  and  ac- 
companied by  a  courteous  letter,  was  sent  to  each  of  the 
reigning  monarchs  and  other  chief  magistrates  of  the  world. 

Before  the  art  of  printing,  the  Bible  was  the  most  expen- 
sive book  in  the  world.  So  late  as  the  American  Revolution, 
in  its  cheapest  edition  a  volume  could  not  be  purchased  for 
less  than  two  dollars.  This  society  now  furnishes  a  copy 
of  the  entire  book  for  twenty-five  cents.  It  has  made  the 
Bible  the  cheapest  book  in  the  world. 

Mills,  anxious  to  see  every  wheel  set  in  motion  for  the 
advancement  of  Christ's  kingdom,  was  restless  because  of  the 
inaction  of  the  Presbyterian  church  in  the  cause  of  Foreign 
Missions;  again  by  his  personal  influence  upon  prominent 


80  ONE    SHORT   LIFE. 

men,  another  plan  was  matured.  A  committee  was  appointed 
by  the  General  Assembly  to  confer  with  committees  from  the 
Dutch  and  Scotch  churches,  and  a  new  society  was  formed, 
called  the  United  Foreign  Missionary  Society.  After  a  few 
years  of  efficient  service  this  society  was  merged  with  the 
American  Board,  yielding  to  it  its  name  and  affairs. 

While  so  busy  with  these  schemes  just  referred  to,  Mr. 
Mills  was  collecting  all  possible  information  in  regard  to 
South  America.  He  desired  to  have  the  way  opened  for  a 
mission  in  that  country,  and  was  willing  to  go  himself  to 
make  the  needed  investigations.  But  it  was  seven  years 
later  when  the  American  Board  sent  the  first  men  to  that 
field. 

In  spite  of  these  great  enterprises,  which  must  have  been 
so  absorbing  of  time  and  energy,  this  busy  man  found  oppor- 
tunity and  strength  to  search  out  the  squalid  back  streets  of 
New  York,  and  to  go  from  house  to  house  of  its  wretched 
inhabitants,  giving  sympathy,  speaking  words  of  Christian 
love  and  instruction,  and  where  they  would  receive  them 
leaving  the  word  of  God  and  good  books. 


ONE   SHOKT   LIFE.  81 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  AMERICAN  COLONIZATION  SOCIETY — MILLS,  AS  ITS  AGENT,  VISITS  APBICA. 

A  BRAHAM  LINCOLN,  when  a  young  man,  made  a 
J~\  journey  into  the  South.  Of  all  the  impressions 
which  those  new  scenes  made  upon  him,  the  one  deepest 
and  strongest  was  that  of  slavery.  It  filled  him  with  loath- 
ing, but  kindled  a  zeal  which  never  slumbered,  until  it  cost 
his  priceless  life. 

It  was  such  a  spark  which  became  a  fire  in  the  oreast  of 
Mills.  What  he  saw  and  what  he  heard,  during  those  south- 
ern tours,  made  him  a  willing  martyr  for  the  sake  of  Africa's 
sons  and  daughters.  Their  degradation  made  him  ready  to 
endure  all  things  if  only  he  could  pierce  the  black  cloud 
overshading  them.  His  first  effort  resulted  in  a  school, 
called  the  African  School,  for  training  young  colored  men  to 
teach  and  preach  to  their  own  race.  He  then  lent  essential 
aid  in  the  formation  of  the  American  Colonization  Society. 

This  society  was  composed  of  noble-minded  men  whose 
pitying  attention  was  fastened  upon  the  bondage,  afflictions 
and  heathenism  of  their  black  brothers,  in  this  so  called  free 
land. 

Their  aim  was  to  furnish  a  refuge,  in  their  own  country, 
for  those  who  were  emancipated  here,  and  it  was  their  hope 
that  such  a  scheme  would  do  much  toward  the  abolition  of 
slavery. 

Their  first  effort  was  the  collection  of  information  :  first, 
in  regard  to  the  condition  of  the  slave  here,  that  they  might 
enlist  general  sympathy  in  their  work.  In  a  letter  written 
6 


82  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 

by  Mr.  Mills  about  this  matter,  he  said :  "  State  facts. 
Facts  will  always  produce  an  effect,  at  least  on  pious  minds. 
You  can  easily  possess  yourself  of  facts,  the  bare  recital  of 
which  will  make  the  heart  bleed."  From  the  extensive  ob- 
servations he  had  made  in  the  South,  and  by  having  the 
subject  so  long  in  his  mind,  he  was  very  ready  to  "  state 
facts,"  and  did  so  in  every  time  and  place.  The  informa- 
tion needed,  in  the  second  place,  by  the  society  was  in  re- 
gard to  a  suitable  location  for  the  colony,  and  the  methods 
which  would  be  required  to  obtain  it.  Mr.  Mills  was  made 
their  agent. 

He  chose  as  a  colleague,  to  share  his  responsibility,  the 
Eev.  Mr.  Burgess.  After  some  months  of  preparation  they 
left  America,  planning  to  visit  England  first  for  information 
and  assistance  and  then  Africa,  for  the  accomplishment  of 
their  errand. 

His  father  says  of  the  "good-bye"  which  he  bade  him, 
at  the  time,  that  "  he  enjoyed  peculiar  peace  of  mind,  com- 
mitting himself  entirely  to  the  guidance  and  protection  of 
the  Almighty."  He,  who  had  endured  so  many  hardships 
for  Christ's  sake,  knew  in  whom  he  trusted. 

After  about  two  weeks'  sailing,  they  encountered  a  fear- 
ful storm  and  had  need  of  all  their  faith.  The  wind  blew 
furiously  for  thirty-six  hours.  The  captain  ordered  the 
masts  cut  away  and  the  decks  cleared.  He  remained  on 
deck,  calmly  giving  orders,  until  they  were  driven  almost 
upon  a  ledge  of  rocks.  Despairing  of  any  safety  in  the 
ship,  he  abandoned  her,  taking  his  children  with  him  in  a 
small  boat.  Some  of  those  left  on  board  the  ship,  in  their 
agony  of  peril,  were  in  the  cabin,  beseeching  the  mercy  of 
Him  who  rules  the  violent  sea.  Others  were  on  deck,  where 
Mr.  Burgess,  praying  aloud,  commended  their  souls  to  God. 


ONE    SHORT   LIFE.  83 

All  unexpectedly,  a  counter  current  bore  them  into  deeper 
water,  past  the  rocks.  All  exclaimed,  "  It  is  the  work  of 
God !  "  A  gloomy  night  they  spent  tossing  on  the  sea,  but 
in  the  morning  quiet  came.  The  mate  assumed  control,  and 
by  using  what  crippled  forces  they  could  command,  they 
found  their  way  to  a  harbor  of  France. 

From  there  they  proceeded  to  London.  They  were  cor- 
dially received  by  a  number  of  distinguished  men  and  offic- 
ials. Among  them  Mr.  Wilberforce  and  Mr.  Zachary 
Macauly,  the  former  governor  of  Sierra  Leone,  who  intro- 
duced them  to  the  Duke  of  Gloucester.  They  met  every- 
where with  Christian  sympathy,  and  the  kindest  offers  of 
service.  Having  obtained  letters  to  the  governors  of  colonies 
in  Africa,  they  left  England  for  the  west  coast,  February  3, 
1818. 

This  voyage  was  a  pleasant  one,  and  brought  them  in 
about  thirty  days  to  the  mouth  of  the  Gambia.  They 
anchored  near  the  village  of  St.  Mary's,  and  went  to  inspect 
this  and  other  settlements.  They  made  the  acquaintance  of 
the  governors  and  the  Europeans,  everywhere  gathering 
useful  and  pertinent  facts. 

They  proceeded  south,  visiting  towns  and  villages,  and 
calling  upon  the  kings  and  head  men.  On  these  occasions 
they  were  received  in  the  "palaver  house,"  by  the  chiefs 
arranged  in  true  African  style,  regardless  of  taste.  One  was 
described  as  wearing  "a  silver-laced  coat,  a  superb  three- 
cornered  hat,  blue-bafta  trousers,  considerably  the  worse  for 
wear,  and  no  stockings  or  shoes."  The  insignia  of  royalty 
were  a  silver-headed  cane  in  one  hand,  a  horse-tail  in  the 
other.  Before  the  palaver  could  go  on,  the  hosts  must  re- 
ceive presents,  and  as  their  guests  had  oftenest  been  slave 
traders,  rum  and  tobacco  had  become  essentials. 


84  ONE   SHORT   LIFE. 

By  means  of  interpreters  they  made  known  their  friendly 
feelings,  and  that  they  had  come  from  America.  "  That 
wise  and  good  men  had  agreed  to  help  the  black  people  who 
wished  to  come  to  this  country  ;  that  the  design  was  a  good 
one,  and  would  promote  the  best  interests  of  the  black  peo- 
ple both  in  America  and  Africa;  that  if  they  would  sell  or 
give  tracts  of  their  unimproved  lands,  the  people  who  came 
would  introduce  more  knowledge  of  the  arts  and  agriculture, 
would  buy  such  things  as  they  had  to  sell,  and  would  sell  to 
them  such  things  as  they  wanted;"  that  the  children  were 
to  be  educated ;  that  they  had  come  as  messengers  of  peace 
and  good  tidings,  bringing  no  weapons  in  their  hands — that 
they  did  not  desire  war. 

They  found  that  African  kings  knew  the  art  of  being 
slothful  in  business.  They  seemed  to  have  no  idea  of 
dispatch,  but  would  talk  for  hours  without  coming  to  the 
point.  In  general  their  reception  was  cordial,  and,  in  some 
instances,  more  than  that.  Land  was  offered  them  in  five 
different  places.  Their  greatest  obstacle  was  the  unsavory 
reputation  of  the  white  men  who  had  preceded  them, — the 
slave-traders  and  merchants, — men  who  had  been  gross,violent 
and  rapacious.  One  of  the  natives  who  saw  Mr.  Mills  and 
Mr.  Burgess  in  prayer,  said  he  "never  knew  before  that 
white  men'prayed ! " 

They  found  that  the  natives  would  not  be  unwilling  to 
give  up  their  superstitions,  and  were  gratified  at  the  pros- 
pect of  education  for  their  children ;  that  they  would  be  glad 
to  have  God's  word,  and  the  pure  religion  it  teaches.  One 
old  man  with  white  hair  and  beard,  wished  for  this  good  time 
to  come  at  once ;  he  wanted  to  know  more  about  God's  book 
before  he  died. 

The  observations  and  inquiries  which  had  been  so  consci- 


ONE    SHORT   LIFE.  85 

entiously  made  by  the  agents,  enabled  them  to  report  to 
thei  r  society  that  the  project  was  both  practicable  and  expedi- 
ent. After  due  consideration  of  the  instructions  and  recom- 
mendations of  experienced  foreigners,  and  the  details  of 
exploration,  which  this  report  furnished  them,  the  society 
thought  it  most  wise  to  proceed  with  the  undertaking. 

After  seeking  needed  individual  and  governmental  aid, 
and  perfecting  so  far  as  possible  the  organization,  the  first 
colony  was  sent  to  Africa  in  1820.  They  endured  the  dis- 
couraging vicissitudes  which  are  generally  incident  to  new 
settlements,  and  in  a  few  years  success  seemed  certain. 

In  1847  LIBERIA  became  an  established  free  republic. 
The  constitution  is  modeled  upon  our  own. 


86  ONE   SHOBT   LIFE. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  LAST  JOURNEY — BRIG  "SUCCESS,"  FRIDAY,  MAY  22,  1818- 

6  6  ^VTT  E  nave  taken  an  affectionate  leave  of  the  clergy- 

V  V     men,  the  civil  officers,  and  the  colonists  of  Sierra 

Leone.     We  are  embarked  for  the  United  States,  by  way 

of  England ;  and  the  continent  of  Africa  recedes  from  our 

I  view." 

This  is  the  last  entry  in  Mills'  journal.  Three  months 
had  been  spent  in  Africa ;  months  of  unsparing  toil,  under 
a  scorching  sun,  amid  depressing  pagan  scenes.  But  the 
undertaking  had  been  reasonably  successful,  and  tired  bodies 
had  been  upheld  by  grateful  hearts. 

On  shipboard  once  more,  with  faces  turned  homeward, 
opportunity  came  for  fatigue  to  assert  itself.  The  strength 
of  Mills,  never  great  at  the  best,  began  to  fail.  A  deep 
spirituality,  which  had  possessed  him  through  all  the  jour- 
ney, grew  stronger  and  stronger.  And  as  they  were  wafted, 
day  by  day,  nearer  home,  it  became  evident  that  his  spirit, 
too,  was  nearing  its  desired  haven.  Fever  burned  his  body; 
but  at  last  eternal  health  claimed  his  soul.  Under  a  glow- 
ing sunset,  he  was  buried,  to  wait  until  the  sea  surrenders 
its  dead. 

The  one  great  desire  of  his  life,  "  to  sit  in  some  quiet 
corner  and  teach  the  perishing,"  was  unfulfilled  ;  but  God 
through  him  had  sent,  and  yet  sends,  many  teachers  to  many 
far  corners. 

Thirty-five  years,  only,  of  mortal  life  was  allotted  him 
in  which  to  accomplish  so  much ;  yet  it  was  time  enough, — 


ONE    SHORT    LIFE.  87 

not  because  of  his  uncommon  gifts,  but  because  he  knew  the 
secret  of  well  doing.  He  did  not  attempt  to  be  the  origin— 
the  source,  but  gloried  in  being  the  channel  through  which 
God  poured  His  great  thoughts.  No  time  was  lost  by 
obstructions ;  the  dredge  that  kept  the  channel  free  was 
prayer — private,  social,  public,  constant  prayer,  not  for  him- 
self, but  for  God's  glory. 


THE   END. 


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